


a lot like yesterday, a lot like never

by lateralplosion



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Implied Past Miscarriage, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Unhappy Childhood, medical needles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 19:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15669321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lateralplosion/pseuds/lateralplosion
Summary: Jaemin tries his very hardest to be sincere. It doesn’t always work.





	a lot like yesterday, a lot like never

_I thought that love was on the stage;_  

 _You give yourself to strangers,_  

 _You don't have to be afraid._  

Florence and the Machine, “Hunger”

 

 

 

 

 

Fall breaks on a Friday in 2017, and Jaemin spends it on Line 2, standing comfortably between two college students who do not recognize him.

It’s nice in a wistful kind of way, but Jaemin takes comfort in the possibility that his anonymity will be short lived.

His stop is Sinchon-dong, where he takes Exit 1 and stands there, blinking, in the stark overcast light, up at Severance Hospital. His breath clouds up in pearly wisps around his face, air already stinging with the coming winter's chill.

His mother does not like hospitals. The last time Jaemin’s seen her anywhere near a hospital was nearly ten years ago, but Jaemin’s spent enough time around his mother to know that time does not heal all wounds. And he is not ready, he thinks, to face whatever reaction she’ll have to the results. Because even though Jaemin has taught himself how to be hopeful, his heart is a bird in his ribcage anyway.

Dr. Shin smiles at him when she comes into the room twenty minutes later, nodding at his discarded shirt, folded neatly on the patient chair.

“Just you today, Jaemin?” she asks, pulling on her gloves, and he gives her a wan smile.

“Just me,” he says, and hoists himself up onto the examining table. “Are you disappointed?”

“Disappointed?” Her laughter is short and clipped, and she guides him to face away from her. Jaemin stares at the dull gray-blue wallpaper. “You’re a dangerous flirt, you know that?”

Jaemin quirks a smile that she cannot see. “Me? I never flirt. I just say what I feel, from the bottom of my heart.”

This time her laugh is in her voice. “That’s what makes you a flirt, Na Jaemin.”

He’s about to respond when he feels her gloved fingers press against his lower back, firm and unrelenting, and Jaemin takes a deep breath. The pain is minimal, fleeting.

“Yes, good,” Dr. Shin is saying, and her voice is so far away, like in a dream. “Hold it like that—”

And Jaemin does—holding so still and so full of breath—and waits.

 

 

 

Jeno calls him almost exactly five minutes after Jaemin had stepped back outside, static crackling into his ear and making his voice pulsate in and out. “Well?!” he demands, and Jaemin laughs at his eagerness.

“Well what?” Jaemin stops in front of UNIQLO, looking up at the window displays. They are still full of EXO’s endorsement posters.

“Don’t be like that,” Jeno says. “You know what. Your _results_. Your back?”

Jaemin holds onto his phone, grinning to himself, letting the pause grow pregnant, and laughs again when Jeno huffs.

“ _Na Jaemin_ —”

“I’m fine,” Jaemin says finally. The words fill him up like a balloon, lightheaded and giddy with relief. “I’m fine,” he repeats. “I can come back.”

Jeno’s cheer is crackly. “I _knew_ it,” Jeno says, and Jaemin can almost see the way his best friend’s eyes crease up when he smiles. “I knew you were going to be fine, I _told_ you.”

“Told me good, didn’t you,” Jaemin says, amused, letting his feet carry him through the crowds of Sinchon—hungry Yonsei students in the lunch hour, businessmen trying to catch a break. “I feel great.”

“Where are you going now?” Jeno asks him. In the background, Jaemin can hear the others laughing, and his heart soars wistfully. _Soon_ , he thinks. “To the company?”

“No,” Jaemin says. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of the trees and their leaves. They are already golden brown and flying in the wind. Jaemin swallows. “I’m going home.”

 

 

 

“Jaemin-ah?”

He’s in the middle of toeing off his shoes when his mother’s voice rings through the front hallway. She appears at the end, wringing small, tired hands. “Did you go see Dr. Shin?”

“Yes,” he answers carefully, straightening up. “I’m clear to go back to the company.”

An odd expression takes over his mother’s face, and she steps closer to cup his cheeks in her hands. It takes so much effort, he thinks, to produce a smile at her as she pushes back a strand of his hair. “Is it silly that I almost hoped you could stay home a little longer…?” Her voice trails off. “It’s lonely here without you.”

This is a truth he knows all too well.

Jaemin finds himself gathering his minimal belongings fifteen minutes later, shoving them all into a duffel bag along with a jacket with a deeper hood, one that’s better for him now that he’s going back to the company.

He takes a step back and looks at the remnants of his room, stripped mostly bare and impersonal, and feels a pang of guilt.

“My only son,” his mother murmurs later over dinner, reaching out to take his hand in hers. At the end of the table, Jaemin’s father eats his rice silently, his face betraying just how tired he must feel. His mother squeezes his hand, her fingers so small and frail around his, and Jaemin fights down the urge to pull away.

 

 

 

Jaemin makes it ten steps into the building before Jeno bear tackles him, grinning and shaking his newly darkened hair out of his eyes.

Jaemin nods at it. “So when did they finally realize that the white-silver makes you look too much like an alien?”

Jeno punches him lightly. “You’re one to talk. You know the coordi noonas are going to give you shit about your skin, right?”

Jaemin runs fingers over the acne along his chin and shrugs. “Do the others know I’m here?”

“Sort of,” Jeno says, half leading and half dragging him into the practice rooms. “I told them you were cleared by your doctor, but I didn’t exactly specify that you were coming tonight—”

Jaemin opens his mouth to say something disparaging, but Jeno is shoving him into a practice room, and Jaemin finds himself staring at two other boys sprawled on the floor.

“Ah,” Jisung says, looking up over his phone screen, not sounding the least bit surprised. “You’re back.”

“Jisung-ah—” Jaemin says, going over to rub his face indulgently into Jisung’s hair, mostly because he knows Jisung hates it. “Hyung has missed you so much—why do you greet me so coldly?”

“It’s not like you died or anything,” Jisung scowls and rubs his head before going back to playing a noisy game. After a moment, though, he glances up to meet Jaemin's eyes. “Welcome back, hyung.”

“Mark-hyung and Donghyuk-hyung say welcome back too,” Chenle announces, waving his phone around in the air, their Kakaotalk group chat on his screen. “They’re with the others right now.”

“I thought you said you didn’t tell them I was coming?” Jaemin raises an eyebrow at Jeno, who puts up his hands.

“I didn’t!”

“He really didn’t,” Chenle snickers. “Jeno-hyung is just bad at hiding secrets.”

Jeno’s eyes crinkle up. “I can’t argue with that,” he says, and Jaemin rolls his eyes before casting a look around. The practice room feels empty with just the four of them. Two absences explained, the last one still hanging in the air like a question mark.

Jaemin frowns. “Where’s—”

But before he can finish. the door opens behind him. They all turn around to see Renjun standing in the doorway, fingers wrapped around the neck of his water bottle, eyes wide with surprise. He’s lost more baby fat around his cheeks, but Renjun is still exactly how Jaemin remembers him—all bright eyes and soft, sloping mouth.

“ _Oh_ ,” Renjun breathes, and the smile that spreads across his face then is something that Jaemin remembers too, the way it’s like his entire person is coming to life. Jaemin notices—almost dazedly—that they’ve fixed his teeth. “Did you get taller?”

“I dunno,” Jaemin’s starting to say, but Renjun is already coming up to hug him, baby hairs at the top of his head getting into Jaemin’s eyes, and he slings an arm around his waist in return. He doesn’t remember Renjun being that short. “I guess I have.”

Renjun takes a step back, beaming. “We missed you, Jaemin-ah,” he says, and suddenly Jaemin doesn't feel quite so out of place.

"I missed you too, Injunnie." Renjun's hair is a brassy, grown-out blond, and Jaemin has to stop himself from running his fingers through it. His stomach lurches most unhelpfully, so he looks away.

“So… _Empathy_ , huh?” Jaemin plops down on the practice room floor to distract himself, lying back to feel the cool wood against his skin. “Wonder how many songs we’re going to have.”

“Two,” Jeno supplies. “Well, technically one, but—”

“Go is going to be so _cool_ —” Chenle interjects, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets and flopping down beside him. “I can’t wait for Mark-hyung to stop bitching about wearing pastels—”

Jaemin snorts and turns his head only to find Renjun lying next to him, his face mere centimeters away. Renjun’s ankle knocks gently into his.

“How’s your back?” he asks quietly, and Jaemin swallows.

“Fine,” he says. “Better. Physical therapy helps a lot. And they’re giving me new meds.”

Renjun smiles and sits up, gazing down at him. “Well, we switched rooms while you were at home. Manager-hyung gave you a room to yourself so you can get more rest.”

“Most _unfairly_ , in my opinion,” Jeno grumbles, and turns to give an indignant glare at Renjun and Jisung. “I have to share a room with _two_ other people—”

“It’s Jisung who’s the messy one,” Renjun laughs, and Jisung pouts, puffing out his cheeks. Jaemin feels Renjun close fingers around his wrist, tugging him up and off the floor. “Come on.”

“Dragging me away already?” Jaemin blurts out, grinning, because that’s all he knows how to do when he’s feeling stupid. Renjun, he’s noticed, makes him feel stupid quite frequently, and it’s everything he can do to keep stumbling along blindly after him. “Where are you taking me?”

“Dorms,” is all that Renjun says, and the way that he’s humming to himself under his breath almost makes Jaemin forget that things are different now, that there’s a pinching in his lower spine that will never go away, that the months he spent apart from them can never be taken back, that they’ve all gotten older, smarter, _stupider_.

“Jaemin-hyung’s doing that thing again,” Jisung says, sounding amused.

“The thing where it looks like he’ll bore into your soul with his eyes, right?” Chenle smirks knowingly, Jisung snickering behind him.

“Some things never change,” Jeno says, shaking his head.

 _Yeah_ , Jaemin thinks, and looks down at Renjun’s hands—all thin fingers and small, oval-shaped nails—wrapped securely around his wrist and thinks, with a stutter of his heart, of how much it feels _right_.

Some things never change.

 

 

 

Jaemin sets his duffel on his bed, looking around at the room they’d cleared for him. It’s quiet, but that’s something he’s gotten used to, growing up for almost seventeen years without any other children in the house.

(For a long time, he remembers thinking that his mother had gotten used to it, too.)

Jaemin unpacks in fifteen minutes, putting clothes and small trinkets away. He doesn’t have much to unpack because he hadn’t had much to bring home with him—the nice thing, he supposes, about being an idol with a regularly set wardrobe and stylist team.

His gaze falls on the picture frame on his bedside table, a portrait of him and his family. It’d been taken almost ten years ago, back when tension hadn’t become the predominant emotion to reign in his household. Before his father stopped trying. Before his mother began looking like she would cry every time Jaemin saw her. Before his home stopped feeling less like a home and more like an empty cell, choked with painful memories and all-consuming guilt.

Someone knocks on his door, and Jaemin looks up, seeing Renjun peeking through hesitantly.

“Everything okay?”

Jaemin gives him one of his pageant smiles. “Gimme one of your Moomins,” he says, laughing when Renjun flushes. “It’s so dull and boring in here.”

“But I only have one,” Renjun says, but it doesn’t even matter to Jaemin, because Renjun alone makes this tiny box of a room feel so full and bright.

 

 

 

Jaemin had been five years old when he asks for a sister, pillowing his chin on his hands and grinning at his parents’ shocked faces.

“But you’re our prince, Jaeminnie,” his mother had cooed, petting back his hair. Jaemin shakes his head.

“I want a sister,” he’d told her, and even at five, Jaemin had already begun to recognize just how much can be accomplished with a smile. “I want to be called oppa!”

He had remembered his father chuckling and his mother giving him a look that was half-exasperated, half-endeared. “When you’re old enough, your girlfriend will call you oppa.”

Jaemin hadn’t understood it then, and he doesn’t understand it now—doesn’t understand why he would want to date anyone he could call his younger sister. But what five-year-old Jaemin does know is that home is lonely, and that loneliness feels awful.

(He doesn’t yet know that, twelve years later, nothing will have changed.)

“Sister!” he’d said again, and his parents had given each other adoring smiles.

Jaemin distinctly remembers, at that moment, thinking that he’d won.

 

 

 

"I'm pretty sure this is a fire hazard," Jaemin says, leaning back against his bed and watching Renjun light all four of the candles he'd brought in.

"Shut up, no it's not." Renjun tosses the used matches in Jaemin's trash bin. "We do this all the time."

Jaemin raises an eyebrow. "Who's we?"

"Me, Jeno, Ten-hyung. Sometimes Jisung. Donghyuck when he's here."

Jaemin snorts and lets Renjun set up the array of snacks he's smuggled in, sodas and candies and bags of chips. "We're going to break out and then Iseul-noona will get mad at me," he laughs.

"Iseul-noona is already mad at you because you haven't been taking care of your skin." Renjun smirks and shoves an open bag of chips his way.

"You sound like Jeno," Jaemin says, and grins when Renjun makes a face.

"Ew." They both laugh for a moment, then Renjun hurriedly takes a sip from his carton of Juicy Cool.

"Will you be okay with choreography?" he says quietly. "I remember last year you were—" Renjun goes quiet then, and Jaemin is thankful that he doesn't finish that sentence.

He knows what Renjun is talking about, the daily pangs of pain that used to plague him towards the end of Chewing Gum. Jaemin remembers suffering through dance practices, the doctor's visits, the day where Lee Sooman called him into his office to discuss options. Jaemin remembers how their CEO had smiled at him and tried to make it seem like this break would be a good thing. _At least you'd get to spend some time at home, Jaemin-ssi._ But Jaemin had known better than to disagree.

"I'll be okay," Jaemin says, fidgeting with the pull tab on his cider can. "As long as I don't push myself too hard."

"You always push yourself too hard," Renjun murmurs, but he's smiling, eyes crinkling up in fondness. Jaemin can feel the load on his shoulders lighten, and he chuckles under his breath.

"Someone has to be the muscle in this group," he says, and accidentally pops the tab off. Jaemin grins. "Oops."

Renjun laughs, and Jaemin's glad that it's dark because he's sure he's flushing. "I missed you, Jaemin-ah. Jeno's too tame and Donghyuck's too extra. You're—"

Jaemin grins. "Just right?"

Renjun smacks his arm. "You're tolerable," he says with a snort before leaning back with a sigh. "Ugh, we're going to be so busy soon. Once we start at Blue Cup it's just going to be nonstop recording and filming."

Jaemin opens up a bag of milk candies. "Blue Cup?"

"It's one of our new studios," Renjun explains casually, and Jaemin frowns.

"New studios, huh," he says quietly. "There's a lot I have to catch up on, I guess."

Renjun snorts, shoving one of the candies in his mouth. "It's not that much, to be honest. A year isn't a lifetime."

Jaemin twists up one of the wrappers in between his fingers, frowning down at his knees. It's not that Renjun is wrong. It's not that at all. But when Jaemin looks back at the past four hundred and something days, all he can remember is silent dinners and doctor's appointments and watching all their music show performances by himself in his room.

"I watched all your VLives," he says faintly, and Jaemin certainly isn't expecting it when his voice cracks. "All of them."

Renjun glances over at him, looking a little bit startled at the change in Jaemin's tone. "Jaemin-ah—" he begins, and his voice is quiet, hesitant now. "Are you okay?"

Jaemin swallows hard over the lump forming in his throat and takes another swig of cider. "I'm fine," he says carefully, looking up to meet Renjun's eyes. "It's good to be back."

It is almost too much, he thinks, to be sitting there in the dark with Renjun with only candlelight to illuminate how Renjun's face twists up with sympathy, with more understanding than Jaemin had ever given him credit for.

"I missed you, Jaemin-ah," Renjun says again, still in that same quiet and tentative voice, as if speaking too loudly would ruin this moment and bring all of Jaemin's walls crashing right back down. "I really did."

Jaemin clears his throat and tries to smile, but it's difficult when he's still stuck in his head and thinking about just how long four hundred days truly is. Maybe Renjun can see this on his face, because he puts down his drink and scoots forward.

And before Jaemin knows what’s happening, Renjun is hugging him, and whatever resolve he’s had up until now breaks clean in half.

This is nothing like the fleeting half-hug he'd given Renjun in their practice room. No. He can feel all of Renjun's weight against him, the breadth of his shoulders and the dig of Renjun's fingers into his back, and smell of his Tsubaki shampoo in his hair. And if Jaemin’s ever learned to recognize something significant, he knows that it's this, because Renjun never initiates physical intimacy—not like this, and certainly never with him.

And so Jaemin allows himself to be vulnerable, even just for this little while, squeezing his eyes shut against Renjun's hair and wrapping his arms tight around Renjun's torso. But eventually he pulls back with a deep, shuddering inhale, leaning back on his palms and smiling jauntily at Renjun.

"Well, I'm back now," he says, voice carefully light. "So you can stop missing me."

Renjun blinks at him, sitting back on his heels almost as if moving through molasses. And he smiles back, tentative and slow. "Trust me," he teases, in a voice that's equally as careful. "I already have."

Neither of them bring it up again after that, instead letting their conversation chase more trivial routes and carry them into the later hours of the night, the candles Renjun brought burning down, down, down in their jars.

 

 

 

“Hyung—”

Jaemin looks up from his iPad to find Jisung hovering in his doorway. He’s dressed to the ones, baseball cap and facemask telling Jaemin that Jisung is distinctly Up To No Good.

He raises an eyebrow. “Are you going somewhere?”

Even through the facemask, Jaemin can see Jisung grinning. “Chenle and I are going out to Myeongdong. Wanna come?”

“That’s a bad idea,” Jaemin says, but it doesn’t stop him from grinning back. It certainly doesn’t stop him from throwing on a going-out getup of his own and following Jisung down the hall to Chenle’s room.

They pass Jeno in the hallway, who only shakes his head. “If anyone asks, I have no idea.”

Jisung cackles. “Thanks, hyung!”

“—but I’m holding Jaemin responsible!”

Jaemin tries to kick him but misses, and eventually ducks into Chenle’s room, confusion mounting when he comes face to face with Renjun instead.

“Renjunnie-hyung’s coming too—” Chenle barks, throwing away whatever element of discretion Jaemin suspects Jisung had been trying to preserve.

“If we get caught, I’m saying it was your idea,” Jisung grumbles, though Chenle remains unfazed, hooking arms with Renjun and courageously leading the way.

Renjun doesn’t make eye contact with him until they’re out of their manager’s radius, glancing over his shoulder at Jaemin and smiling nervously.

Jaemin snorts and holds Renjun back by the hood of his jacket, sliding an arm around his shoulders.

“First time taking the kids out,” he says, laughing at the semi-mortified look on Renjun’s face. “ _What_ , they’re practically our children—”

“I’ve just been so restless lately,” Renjun starts, a little breathlessly, and shoves his hands into his pockets. “I just thought—you know—” He shrugs. “It’d be nice to get out—”

“Peace, my restless one,” Jaemin coos, squeezing his shoulder and putting on a megawatt smile he’s sure Renjun senses more than sees. “If it’s danger and excitement you desire, you’ve picked the right man—”

“Better than No-Jaem Jeno-hyung,” Chenle crows, half-skipping now that they’ve made it down into the subway station with only minimal staring.

Jisung frowns thoughtfully. “Maybe we shouldn’t have left Jeno-hyung behind?”

Chenle snorts and shakes his head, swiping his T-money card at the terminal. “Someone’s gotta stay behind or else it’ll look suspicious!”

“Right,” Jaemin says, letting go of Renjun long enough to get through the gates, then promptly resuming his koala grip on Renjun’s shoulders. “‘Cause only one member in the dorm is so much less fishy than zero.”

“Ahh, who cares—” Jisung says in earnest. “I’ve been wanting to go out for _ages_.”

“You don’t really think manager-hyung won’t find out that we’re gone, do you?” Renjun asks Jaemin quietly, kicking his legs back and forth on the uncomfortable subway seat. Jaemin’s arm is still around his shoulders, though Jaemin’s pleased to find that Renjun doesn’t look like he minds at all.

“'Course he’ll find out,” Jaemin laughs. “But—still—I came.” He looks at him. “So did you.”

“Yeah,” Renjun says thoughtfully, and Jaemin isn’t sure if he imagines the way Renjun leans into him, or if that’s just the sway of their subway car. “Yeah, I did come.”

Getting off at Myeongdong proves to be a little more challenging, mainly because the station is laden with international fans who have trained themselves to recognize Jisung by a snapshot of his shoelaces. There’s some screaming (which Chenle delights in) and some shoving (which Renjun does not), but somehow they make it up into the streets, where even their most dedicated of fans have trouble following them through the throngs of tourists milling about.

They all follow Chenle into Shinsegae Duty-Free, taking the elevator down to the lower floors to meander down the market aisles and munch on food samples.

“This isn’t so bad,” Renjun says, his fingers greasy and shiny from the sausages they’re eating.

“What, walking with me?” Jaemin clutches at his chest, pretending to be affronted. “Ah, Injung, you wound me—”

“Not that—” Renjun smacks his arm, flushing red across his nose. “But like, being out—I thought it’d be harder, but this is surprisingly easy.”

Jaemin takes Renjun’s wrapper from him, depositing their waste into a trash can before nudging Renjun after the slowly disappearing backs of Jisung and Chenle. “You’ve never really done something like this, have you?” Jaemin grins at him. “Sneak out?”

“Not really,” Renjun admits, eyes crinkling up over his facemask. “Kind of hard to when you have seven noonas, you know?”

Jaemin doesn’t know.

He can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to not grow up lonely, to be greeted with anything other than silence as he stands in the foyer of their home, clutching his skates to his chest and wondering if his mother had forgotten to make dinner again. He looks at Renjun and sees none of that, only the face of someone who’s only ever known love.

But Jaemin isn’t angry. Not because he isn’t jealous—he might never admit it, but oh, he _is_ —but because maybe, just maybe, it’s that feeling of being loved that Jaemin is so desperately searching for. That maybe he’s seeking a little bit of that from Renjun.

Another smile cuts across his face, and he reaches out to pinch Renjun’s cheeks.

“Hmm, looks like now our innocent boy’s rebelling—” Jaemin teases, laughing when Renjun almost shoves him into a shopping passerby. “Guess our comeback concept really will suit you—”

“Wait,” Renjun interrupts, frowning at the crowd, and points. “We lost them.”

Jaemin follows his finger, and Renjun is right—there’s no sign of the other two anymore.

Renjun bites his lip. “Should we call them?”

“Ahh, let them be,” Jaemin says, waving his hand in dismissal. “Besides, we’re much more conspicuous in four than we are in pairs.”

He can feel Renjun’s eyes on him as they get into the elevator again, riding it up to the seventh floor to check out the men’s accessories.

“What?” Jaemin asks, laughing at the way Renjun keeps staring.

Renjun flushes again. “Nothing, it’s just—you’ve done this a lot, huh?”

“What, sneaking out?” Jaemin asks, and Renjun nods.

“Jeno, Mark-hyung, and I used to do this all the time as Rookies.” They’re wandering aimlessly through the watch section, Jaemin letting his eyes trail over the glass cases of accessories. There’s a small guilty lurch in his chest at the thought of having left Jeno behind, but he hurriedly pushes that down. He glances to the side, and Renjun looks a little distant, the way he always does whenever the topic of Rookies comes up. Jaemin slings an arm around his shoulders. “It’s not that big of a deal, really—we always got in trouble—”

He swears that the corners of Renjun’s eyes crinkle up slightly, and some of the tightness in Jaemin’s ribs goes away.

“Hey—” he says, tapping one of the display cases (earning him a dirty look from the sales clerk) and nodding at the Daniel Wellington array beneath the glass. “What do you think of those?”

Renjun leans over to peer at them. “The wrist cuffs?”

Jaemin pulls down his face mask and angles a smile at the saleswoman. “Could we take a look at these, please?”

Renjun gives him a look. “What are you doing?”

“Making it worthwhile,” is all Jaemin says, and pushes one of the cuffs across the counter at him.

“You’re strange—” Renjun scoffs, but puts it on anyway. The silver gleams harsh and cold under the department store lighting, and Jaemin frowns, picking up the one in gold.

“Actually,” he says, “trade with me—”

And so Renjun does, holding his hand up to his face, smiling shyly, the rosy metal bringing out a happy flush in his skin. “I like it.”

For a moment, Jaemin lets himself get caught up by just how beautiful Renjun is. He’s not wearing any makeup, and Jaemin can only see half his face for crying out loud, but it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t change the way Jaemin’s breath catches and sticks in his chest, and it’s only when Renjun turns back to the sales lady, sliding the cuff off his wrist and onto the counter again, that Jaemin’s brain remembers how to think.

“I’ll take this one, please,” Renjun is saying, already reaching for his wallet, but Jaemin catches Renjun’s wrist in his fingers, choosing to ignore the look of quiet surprise on his face in favor of smiling charmingly at the clerk.

Jaemin holds up the silver cuff as well. “I’m paying for both of them,” he tells her, and Renjun gasps.

“Both?” Renjun breathes. “But—”

“My first ever secret outing with Injunnie,” Jaemin says carefully, keeping his eyes on the sales clerk as she hands him a bag. “I wanna remember it.”

Renjun stares at him for a moment, the skin right under his eyes slowly flushing dark. “No one does that,” he says, voice uncertain and hesitant.

“We’ll say it’s your birthday present.” Jaemin reaches into the bag to fish out Renjun’s bracelet.

“But—my birthday’s not until March,” Renjun says faintly,

This time, Jaemin does look at Renjun, hyper aware of every breath in his body, the tentative smile on his face, and takes one of Renjun’s hands.

“Then, happy early birthday, Injunnie,” Jaemin says quietly, and puts the cuff on his wrist. Renjun’s eyes go round and wide, his ears turning pink. Jaemin loses another piece of his heart then, and he wonders faintly what it would be like to cup that face in between his palms and kiss him right through his mask. And kiss him again. And again—

The shrill chirrup of his phone cuts straight into Jaemin’s thoughts, sparing him from continuing that dangerous line of thought. Jaemin tears his eyes away from Renjun’s face, painfully aware of how hot his cheeks burn. He fishes his phone out of his back pocket to answer Jisung’s call. “Where are you?”

“Dead,” Jisung says sourly, and Jaemin can faintly make out the sounds of their manager scolding them. “Manager-hyung found us. We’re waiting for you outside.”

Jaemin shakes his head and hangs up. “Busted,” he says, and dares to meet Renjun’s eyes.

Renjun, still blushing, gives him a small, furtive smile. “Oops.”

The cuff glints, a lovely rose gold, from where his hand is at his side. Renjun looks, for a moment, like he’s about to say something more, but Jaemin decidedly hooks his fingers into the crook of Renjun’s arm and tugs him forward.

“Come on.”

 

 

 

That night, Jaemin dreams of the rink for the first time in five years. He dreams of the ice, smooth and glassy and pristine, and the clack of his blades springing back against the heels of his boots. He dreams of the cold, the way the tips of his fingers go a little bit numb, the stinging chill in his cheeks.

Jaemin dreams of flying, because when he digs his heels in and races down the length of the rink and sends showers of ice flakes through the air, there’s no way it could possibly be anything else. And Jaemin dreams of someone skating just ahead of him on the track, sailing down the ice in smooth, gliding strokes.

Jaemin tries to catch him, bends his knees and gets down low, but the skater is still faster, dancing just out of his reach.

 

 

 

They officially record the audio for Go in January, and Jaemin spends the following weeks in a whirlwind of practice studios, recording at Blue Cup, and checking in with Dr. Shin via video chat.

It's easy to fall back into the swing of recording, because Mark is clearly excited about his contribution to the lyrics. Jaemin watches fondly as Mark enthusiastically negotiates a particular style he wants to emulate, laughing when he lights up with the producers' praise. It makes Jaemin particularly eager to please him, trying his best to give Mark's rap lyrics justice. But Jaemin isn't a rapper by nature and it takes him a few tries to get it right. Somehow, though, Jaemin makes it through with relatively little embarrassment, and they all get sent off to the stylists when the recording is officially over.

Jeno's hair goes inky black, and the hair stylists dye completely over Renjun's brassy blonde with a deep brown. Chenle and Jisung go in for another round of bleach to take both of them to platinum, while the rest of them all get their hair lightened to various shades of caramel.

"Oh," Chenle says, delighted, when Jaemin is released from the stylist team's claws. "Oh, this is perfect."

"He looks like Jeno-hyung in Chewing Gum!" Jisung snickers as Jaemin combs his fingers back through his newly golden bangs.

"Don't insult me like that," Jeno smirks, and even Jaemin laughs at that, because that was good.

"So—first time getting the infamous SM bleach," Renjun teases. "How's it feel?"

"Makes no difference," Jaemin throws back easily, and flashes him a smile. "I'm handsome either way." He's having a magnificently hard time not blatantly staring at Renjun with his darkened hair, not when Renjun looks so damned beautiful with it. The last time he had hair this dark was right before their debut, at which point they'd dyed his hair a reddish auburn.

Donghyuck rolls his eyes. "Would it kill you to not be a grease machine for once? It's like you left and came back the exact same person."

"Well, if you just spent more time with us," Renjun scoffs, catching Jaemin off guard. Renjun gives him a small grin. "You’d know that Jaeminnie has definitely changed."

"It’s not my fault you’re all having sleepovers without me!" Donghyuck whines, and Jaemin feels his face grow warm, glancing at Renjun.

" _And_ me," Jeno gives them both a pointed look. "Ten-hyung told me about your intimate little candlelit heart to heart a couple of weeks ago.”

Renjun flushes deeply at this, eyes widening. “I can’t tell Ten-hyung anything anymore,” he mumbles.

"Ooh, scandalous," Chenle says in English, and Jaemin laughs along with the rest of them, pretending like his heart isn't hammering loud against his ribcage. Then Mark comes back with his hair freshly dyed, and the conversation takes other turns—their music video, their trip to Los Angeles, and the apparent wonders of In-N-Out.

“Can you really order a five by five, hyung?” Jisung asks in a dazed sort of awe.

Mark looks exceedingly pained. “Please don’t order a five by five while I’m not there. Think of all the calories.”

"You’re all going to blow up Hollywood without us," Donghyuck pouts, snuggling up against Renjun’s side. “Renjun-ah, keep them on a leash for me.”

Renjun laughs. "Who is there even to leash? Jisung's barely old enough to swear and Jeno would be in bed by eight o'clock if he could."

"Oh right," Donghyuck says scathingly, as Jeno royally rolls his eyes. "I forgot I can only rely on Jeno-yah."

"No-Jaem Jeno-hyung!" Chenle crows, and they all laugh until Mark shushes them.

 

 

 

After recording is over and finalized, it seems they have barely days to rest before they leave for Los Angeles. Personally, Jaemin finds that it matters very little. It’ll be nice to get away for a while, and at least this time he’ll be able to blame the unanswered texts from his mother on the lack of cellular data.

The fans at Incheon are as noisy and unrelenting as ever, but Jeno tugs him firmly through the shifting mass of girls and cameras, his hand reassuring and warm in the crook of Jaemin’s arm. It’s only five of them that day, Mark and Donghyuck to follow them to LAX the day afterward.

The staff gives him and Chenle GoPros as they’re walking, and it doesn’t take him long to get back into the swing of things, grinning into the camera and chattering mindlessly about their comeback.

Jaemin adjusts his cap, pushing newly bleached hair out of his eyes, and winks at the camera. “It’s so nice to be back with all of our Czennies~ Did you all miss me?”

“Jaeminnie’s been out for almost a year now—” Renjun stumbles backward up the escalator to join his shot, bumping into him with an _oomph_. “But everything is fine now, right?”

Jaemin grins broadly, stretching out his arm to get them both in the shot. “Everything’s fine,” he repeats, and it’s almost the truth. “I’m happy to be back with everyone.”

He checks his social media as they wait outside their gate, scrolling down past the flurry of fansite previews to look for photos of himself, pleased when he finds some of his old fansites still active.

“Ari-hyung will get mad if he sees you on Twitter,” Renjun comments mildly, peering over at his screen from under his cap. “You know we’re not supposed to have it.”

“What he doesn't know won’t hurt him,” Jaemin says, and opens a grainy preview of Renjun, zooming far into the frame and holding it up in front of his face. “Wow, good looking—”

“Ew, no—” Renjun scrunches up his nose, pushing his phone away. “I look terrible.”

“Maybe you should become a fansite master.” Jaemin flutters his eyelashes at him. “I mean, you already take so many photos, might as well open up a fansite, call it _Finding Nana_ —”

“We don’t need any more people to plaster your stupid face everywhere,” Renjun retorts, sounding, Jaemin’s pleased to hear, mildly flustered. “And plus, I like taking photos of _things_ , not people.” He swipes idly back and forth between his home screens, opening his photo app and scrolling listlessly. “It’s easier.”

Jaemin pretends to pout. “My face isn’t stupid, is it?”

Renjun bites his lip. “No,” he says, and his cheeks are tinged with the faintest of pinks. “It’s not.”

Later, when they’re settling into the plane, Jaemin counts the seats, sliding into the airplane aisle and letting Renjun scoot in after him. Jeno is already by the window, face pressed up against the glass to peer outside.

“We’re all sitting together,” Jaemin says, frowning in confusion as the realization dawns upon him.

“Mmm, yeah.” Renjun kicks off his shoes, pulling his legs up to his chest and gazing up quietly at him. “What about it?”

Jaemin watches him for a moment, letting his eyes trail back over to Jeno, who is using his iPad front camera to peer at himself. In front of them, Jisung and Chenle are making faces into their GoPro, snickering. “That means they bought all five seats in advance…”

Renjun’s eyes crescent pleasantly as he smiles, and he pats the back of Jaemin’s hand, touch cool and light. “We had a feeling,” he says finally, voice fond, “that you’d be back.”

 

 

 

Jaemin peers at his reflection, the image of himself shaky because the stylist holding up the mirror for him is also using her cellphone as a source of light. It’s the first day of the shoot, still just the five of them, and Jaemin can already feel the fatigue starting to settle in his bones. The Los Angeles heat is dry and parching, even in the cooling hours of the evening.

Jaemin fixes his hair, scrutinizing himself. The stylists had given him blue contacts to wear that day, and he has decided that he likes how they look.

“Okay, we get it, Jaeminnie,” Jeno calls from behind him. “You’re beautiful, you narcissist, now stop hogging the mirror.”

“Don’t you think I look foreign?” Jaemin says, turning around to grin at him. “I think I look foreign.”

“You’d pass better if you knew how to say more than 'Let’s get it' in English” Jeno says, and Jaemin gives him a shameless smile.

“Yo, let’s get it!”

Jeno fights to not roll his eyes. He’s wearing this ridiculous pastel jacket, one that, under normal circumstances, Jaemin would’ve teased him relentlessly for. But it’s a much different story when Renjun—standing a short distance away to get repowdered—is wearing a pair of equally ridiculous velour sweatpants, paired with a matching jacket that is much too big for him (as are most things on Renjun). Chenle shows him something on his phone and they press their heads together, laughing, and Jaemin doesn’t realize he’s staring until Jeno punches him in the arm.

“Yah, what are you grinning about, idiot—”

“Nothing,” Jaemin says, rubbing his elbow, allowing his best friend to sling an arm around his shoulders and watching Jeno try to follow his gaze toward the other two.

“Your smile is so creepy, you know that?” Jeno raises an eyebrow. “Like you never wanna blink.”

Jaemin smirks. “Jealous?” He ducks out from under Jeno’s arm and wanders out toward the edge of the rooftop they’re shooting on. He strikes a pose and gives Jeno his best winning smile. Some of the coordis laugh, undoubtedly charmed. “See, you just can’t fake my natural charisma, you have to be _born_ with it.”

Jeno shakes his head. “You are such a creep,” he says, laughing, and makes to kick him but Jaemin dodges.

“But at least he has a handsome face.” They both turn to see Renjun draped all over Chenle. The sheen of his jacket is hazy in the dark, lit only by the few lights that they have on set, and Renjun smiles shyly at Jaemin. “You can only get away with it if you have a handsome face.”

“Aigoo, our Injunnie is handsome too,” Jaemin says, going up to pinch his cheeks. His skin is soft and smooth from the powder, and he swears he can see Renjun blush just a little under all the CC cream.

“Do you flirt with everyone?” he asks softly. His hands are cold when they come up to bat his pinching fingers away. “Or does saying such sincere things with a straight face just come naturally to you?”

“I never flirt,” Jaemin says, and he means it, because only Renjun can look this good in a wine-red velour jacket, blue tinted sunglasses, and the expression of someone still getting used to his own face. Jaemin wonders if Renjun has heard that he is pretty more than he is handsome.

“Okay, _yeah_ ,” Jeno says, shoving into his side and knocking the both of them apart. “So in other news, pigs can fly, Jisung is well behaved, and our Nana’s not a heartbreaker—”

Jaemin ends up kicking him square in the back, shaking his head as Jeno howls and half crawls his way to their manager for pity. Renjun gives him another uncertain smile, and Jaemin grins back.

Later, when they’re filming the bike scene, Renjun stays back with Jisung to follow on foot, so Jaemin spends most of his time watching Jeno and Chenle try to outperform each other on their bikes. He most certainly doesn’t laugh when Chenle eats shit twice.

“You’re not as good at wheelies as you say you are,” Renjun tells him on the way to the company’s rental property, when they’re all squished together in the back of the rental van, Jisung sound asleep on his shoulder.

“Not on that kind of bike, I’m not,” Jaemin says, agreeing wholeheartedly. He is intently aware of where their knees are touching, the way the passing street lamps cast flickering shadows on his face. Renjun, frankly, looks tired. “Though I didn’t see you riding either.”

Renjun swallows and looks out the window. “I bruise easily.”

Jaemin thinks back to when they were trainees, of Renjun staying behind to practice his dancing, of the darkening bruises along his shins where he kept falling. He remembers thinking, back then, that Renjun was delicate, but now—with Renjun glancing over to meet his gaze, the line of his mouth thin and determined, eyes bright and glimmering in the passing lights—Jaemin knows better.

Renjun awkwardly tells him goodnight when they get to the rental house, heading off to his room with Jeno. Jaemin follows Jisung into their room, watching him flop down on one of the beds to immerse himself in one of his phone games. It’s then that Jaemin strikes, throwing himself bodily on top of Jisung and pretending to be deadweight.

“Ahh, Jisungie, I’m so tired—” Jaemin moans.

“Hyung—” Jisung’s voice comes, muffled and annoyed, and Jaemin rolls off of him, grinning.

“Aigoo, my cutie,” he says, pinching Jisung’s cheeks and laughing with Jisung tries to squirm away.

“ _Hyung_ , stop messing around—” Jisung grumbles, finally breaking free of Jaemin’s pinching fingers and sulkily going back to his game.

“Mess around? Me?” Jaemin lies back and raises his eyebrows at him, watching their youngest furiously do battle with some faceless enemy. “On the contrary, I take everything with the utmost seriousness.”

Jisung looks up at him over his screen, bangs messy and eyeliner still smudged because he always forgets to not rub his eyes. “Well, sometimes you confuse people. You do this to everyone, and it’s hard to tell when you’re joking or not.”

Jaemin frowns. “I’m always serious.”

“‘Kay, hyung.” Jisung goes back to his game with a shrug, and Jaemin brushes his teeth, staring at himself in the mirror.

Over the years, he’s lost the fat along his jaw and grown into his eyes. A couple of weeks at the dermatologist had worked magic on his skin, which is now mostly clear. His hair, unspared by the infamous SM bleach, gleams a golden amber.

“I’m always serious,” he tells his reflection, but even to his own ears, the words sound empty.

 

 

 

On his meager iPhone speakers, Go blares out tinny and muffled, but it’s enough for Jaemin to hear at one in the morning, running through choreography over and over until his shirt is drenched with sweat.

Despite the hour, Jaemin’s body is coursing with restless energy, going over to his phone to replay the song one more time. They'll be shooting the dancing sequences tomorrow, and although no one has ever questioned his ability to dance, Jaemin needs to know that it’ll be perfect.

He wipes his face with his shirt, fanning himself. It’s cool outside on the patio where he’s practicing, but his shirt still sticks to his back. Again, the opening bars of Go pulsate through the night air, and Jaemin’s body moves without thinking.

Jisung’s words echo through his head as he runs through the moves for the umpteenth time— _Hyung, stop messing around_ —and Jaemin can feel himself dancing faster, hitting every beat harder, as if trying to cast off the imaginary weights he can feel tied to his limbs, the burden of not being seen for over a year weighing upon him. He _cannot_ pull the rest of his group down, he can’t. Jaemin has so much to prove—that he’s healthy, that he’s still just as good as the rest of them, that his fans didn’t waste their time waiting for him for all those sad and lonely months that Jaemin spent either staring up at his childhood bedroom ceiling or putting his body through grueling physical therapy that always left him exhausted, drained.

His sweatpants scrape the cement as he gets down on his knees during Mark’s rap, pushing up off the floor with his palms, and that’s when it happens.

Pain floods his waist, coursing straight down his spine right into his legs, and Jaemin crumples to the ground, the entire line of his body going tight and rigid. Their song keeps right on playing, but Jaemin can barely hear it over the deep, unrelenting reverb of his heartbeat in his ears, staring down at the concrete and drinking in deep, shuddering breaths. His arms are still shaking as he gingerly tries to stand up, and another lightning bolt of pain zips down his spine. Jaemin grits his teeth, clenching his fingers against the cement. Of all times, why _now_?

“Yah—” Jaemin’s head snaps up and he sees Jeno halfway out the door to the back patio, rubbing at his eyes. Jeno frowns. “What’re you doing?”

“Nothing,” Jaemin says shortly. “Just practicing.”

Jeno shakes his head, closing the screen door behind him as he walks closer. “It’s so late—you know they’re gonna be on your ass tomorrow—” Jaemin sees Jeno stop, suddenly looking entirely more awake, and Jaemin tenses up and forces himself to stand, wincing at the way his back protests.

Jeno takes a step closer, his eyebrows knitted together with knowing. “It’s your back, isn’t it?”

“ _No_ ,” Jaemin says. “It was nothing. I was just resting.”

“No, you idiot, I can see it on your face.” Jeno crosses his arms and narrows his eyes. Jaemin tries hard not to flinch, because he hasn’t felt like this in a while. Jeno has always had the uncanny ability to see straight through him, and sometimes Jaemin wishes Jeno couldn’t read him like he knew every single one of his thoughts. “How bad is it? Are you going to tell manager-hyung?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Jaemin’s starting to say, but Jeno shakes his head.

“You’re _not_ fine, Jaemin. You know what happens if you go and get yourself injured again, right?” Jeno’s voice cuts sharp through the silence, flooding Jaemin’s body with guilt and shame, because he knows. He _knows_.

Jeno’s fist hits his chest with a loud smack. “It doesn’t just affect you, Jaemin, it affects all of us. If you’ve lost all personal sense of self-preservation, _fine_ , but don’t you _dare_ let your selfishness jeopardize the group. If you’re not going to tell the manager, at least tell Mark-hyung tomorrow.”

“There’s _nothing_ to tell him—” Jaemin snaps, struggling to keep his voice level. “It’s _nothing_.”

An odd expression steals across his best friend’s face, and Jeno’s mouth tightens, his eyes boring holes into him. “Like how your obsession with Renjun is nothing?”

The next few moments of silence that pass between them seem even louder than usual, and this time the heartbeat thudding in his ears is pure panic, confusion, anger. Jaemin doesn’t know when he had taken a step toward Jeno, or when his hands had balled up into fists.

“I am _not_ obsessed with Renjun.”

Jeno frowns, lines creasing across his forehead, and takes a step back. “Alright,” he says, raising up his hands. “Alright. Just—tell Mark-hyung about your back. If you don’t, I will.”

Jaemin swallows, feeling the weight of Jeno’s gaze on him, and turns his back to pick up his phone. “Go to bed,” he mutters.

Jeno doesn’t respond, but the sound of the screen door opening and closing is answer enough. All at once, Jaemin is alone again, with nothing to keep him company but the crickets, his swirling thoughts, and the lingering pain at the base of his spine.

 

 

 

Jeno says nothing of the previous night when Jaemin comes down the next morning, and if Jaemin had been expecting any kind of silent treatment, none comes.

They all eat breakfast in a weary silence, sitting around the rental property’s kitchen table until their manager’s ringtone heralds the arrival of Mark and Donghyuck from LAX.

Jaemin is one of the few who get up to go greet them, following Jeno and their manager outside into the crisp winter morning. Donghyuck is standing on the grassy curb with his duffel by his side, shading his eyes and blinking up at the rental property. “Wow, _seriously_? Daebak.”

Mark, on the other hand, seems slightly more flustered, shuffling past them in a hurry and mumbling about needing to pee.

Jaemin grins at Donghyuck and gestures up at the sky, a clear blue-ish white. “Guess our Full Sun brought the sunshine!”

Donghyuck wrinkles his nose. “I suppose you didn’t leave your greasy one-liners in Seoul, did you—” He nudges his duffel with his foot. “Spare me the secondhand embarrassment and be useful.”

Jaemin snorts, stooping to pick up the bag. All at once, a hot, raw twinge of pain shoots down into his legs, and Jaemin drops the bag, biting down hard on his bottom lip. He glances around, eyes watering, and hopes that no one has noticed. But Jeno appears from behind him to grab Donghyuck’s bag. They make eye contact silently, and something poignant and _knowing_ flashes in Jeno’s eyes. Jaemin turns away first, face burning hot, and follows Jeno back inside.

Whatever guilt Jaemin is harboring simply melts away the moment he steps back into the kitchen. They’re all clustered around the director’s iPad, Mark hunched over the table eating toast, Chenle's arms wound around his waist. Jisung is very unsuccessfully trying to pry Donghyuck off his back, Jeno squeezing into the space between them. Jaemin’s standing there looking at them all when he’s hit with a staggering wave of _belonging_ , like this is the part when everything falls into place. And it occurs to him just how much he’s missed this, the profundity of it making his heart swell.

And, in the center of it all, Renjun—his eyes aglow with the light of the screen, brows furrowed slightly in concentration as he watches. But then Renjun catches sight of Jaemin hovering in the doorway and smiles at him, warm and bright. “Wanna see?”

Jaemin does, going over to tuck himself into the crook of Renjun’s shoulder to watch the raw footage from yesterday, Renjun’s hair still shower-damp and cool against his cheek. He smells like toothpaste and aftershave.

“I can’t believe you guys filmed without us—” Donghyuck whines. “ _Me_ , the main visual—”

Renjun promptly elbows Donghyuck in the stomach, laughing. “But I think it’s Jaeminnie’s visuals that are really on point,” he says, turning back to smile at him, and Jaemin would’ve laughed then if the fondness on Renjun’s face didn’t just steal the breath out of his lungs. And suddenly the warm flush is back with a vengeance, and he’s vaguely aware that he must look stupid, because Jeno clears his throat.

“Let’s not let it go to your head, now.” Jeno gives him a pointed look, and Jaemin lets out a low, shaky exhale.

 

 

 

With the full seven of them, filming for Go feels much more like an official affair, with Mark trying to play both leader and translator roles at the same time and Donghyuck peppering every other take or so with loud suggestions that most of them ignore.

It’s tiring, filming. They’re all tired. And the pain doesn’t relent, even though he papier-mâchés his lower back with Salonpas and stretches extra thoroughly before filming. It lingers, throbbing, at the base of his spine, and not even the makeup can entirely cover up his pained grimaces when they pause for breaks.

But Jaemin would much rather have this—running amok in the streets of Los Angeles, wearing flashy clothes and not having to worry about doctor visits or physical therapy or the way that his mother’s unread KakaoTalk messages burn holes in his pockets. Jaemin would much rather have the rush of night air, the flashing headlights of cars, and Renjun looking so impossibly ethereal even in the most ludicrous of outfits. The stylists had swept his hair up and put him in dark gray contacts, and it’s almost enough—Jaemin thinks—to make him forget about the pain.

“You okay?”

Jaemin looks up from where he’s squatting on the sidewalk curb, drinking water, and sees Mark peering down at him. He straightens up, shrugging, and dutifully ignores the way the pain flares up in his waist.

“It’s been a while since I’ve filmed an MV. Just readjusting, that’s all.”

Mark nods and gestures for the water bottle. “If you’re tired, just tell the director and we can stop.”

Jaemin’s face breaks out into a grin, and he flings an arm around his shoulders. “Aiyoo, our leader is so cute when he worries.”

“Yah—” Mark half-heartedly tries to shrug him off but relents. “It’s good to be filming with you again, Jaemin-ah.”

“I did _not_ miss your flirting,” Donghyuck huffs, attaching himself to Mark’s other arm. “But I guess I might have missed your face—”

“Well, we need Jaemin’s face to make up for yours.” Renjun appears from behind them, smirking, and Jaemin flushes for a moment, tuning out Mark’s cackle or Donghyuck’s indignant protests.

Renjun’s still grinning to himself, clearly pleased, when he looks over at Jaemin expectantly, and this is one thing that Jaemin can never get over—how bold and unashamedly Renjun wears all of his emotions right on his face.

But Jaemin composes himself with a broad smile and winks at him. “We already have Injunnie’s face,” he says, and laughs when Renjun turns red.

“Gross!” Chenle crows from farther off.

“Jaemin-hyung’s flirting again,” Jisung says, and even then Jaemin can see how Renjun’s face falls, eyes going distant.

“I wish you wouldn’t say that kind of thing,” he says, quiet enough for only Jaemin to hear.

Jaemin frowns. “But it’s true.”

Renjun bites his lip, as if contemplating whether or not to continue, and sighs. “But you say that to everyone.” And there’s a note there in his voice that Jaemin can’t quite place, and part of him wants to just reach out and wrap an arm around Renjun’s shoulders, the way he always does.

But instead, Jaemin only shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “I… didn’t notice.”

“Yeah,” Renjun says, giving him a small, wistful smile that wraps tight around Jaemin’s heart and _squeezes_. “I know.”

“Still expecting me to believe that this Renjun thing is nothing?” Jeno whispers into his ear later when they’re waiting in line to eat dinner. Jaemin presses his lips together and says nothing, only goes to stand next to Renjun where he’s immersed in his phone, listening to something.

“Hey, Injunnie,” Jaemin says quietly, smiling when Renjun looks up, mildly startled. Jaemin gives him a small nudge. “What’re you listening to?”

Renjun bites his lip. “Sicheng-ge sent me a playlist,” he says, sounding almost embarrassed.

Jaemin knocks gently into his side. “Can I listen?”

Renjun blinks and almost makes to take out one of his AirPods. “I—it’s all in Chinese, though.”

“That’s okay,” Jaemin hums, leaning in to pluck the AirPod from Renjun’s ear and fitting it into his own. The sounds of a foreign language fill his ears, and Jaemin can see the way Renjun stares at him, looking quietly hopeful.

“I like it,” Jaemin tells him, and Renjun’s face breaks out into a smile.

Just then, Mark comes back from inside bearing a menu, and they all gather around him to peer at it, Renjun leaning all his body weight on Jaemin and hanging off his shoulder with one arm.

Jaemin fights hard to hide his smile. His back continues to throb.

 

 

 

“Hyung.” Jaemin leans in the doorway of Mark and Donghyuck’s room.

Mark glances up, his hair still messy from sleep. “Did you finish packing?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re confessing—” Donghyuck makes a face, pretending to gag. “Because I _will_ leave this room—”

“What’s this about someone confessing?” Jeno pops his head in, toothbrush still in his mouth. His eyes find Jaemin’s, and Jeno frowns. “Jaeminnie?”

Jaemin pointedly avoids Jeno’s gaze, rubbing the back of his neck. “No, actually, you should probably all hear this.”

“Hear what?” Renjun is the last to peek in, already dressed.

Jaemin’s stomach churns, a maelstrom of shame and hot misery, and his face floods with heat. He takes a deep breath. “I hurt my back again a couple of days ago.”

It’s Renjun’s sharp gasp that throws him off guard the most, but Jaemin can’t bear to look at him at this moment, doesn’t want to find betrayal or hurt in Renjun’s eyes. Instead, he forces himself to look at Mark, whose frown lines are getting more pronounced now.

“A couple of days ago? What were you doing?”

“Dancing.” Jaemin shrugs. “I was just practicing the night before you two arrived. It’s not a big deal. It didn’t get in the way of filming.”

“Yeah, but—” Renjun takes a step closer to him, worry written so clearly all over his face. “Weren’t you in pain?”

Jaemin sucks in a breath, allowing himself for a moment to lock eyes with Renjun, before looking away. “It was nothing compared to before.” And at least _that_ part is true.

“O...kay—” Mark puts his hands on his waist. “I think you should go to the doctor when we get back.”

Jaemin’s mouth tastes like cotton, but he doesn’t argue. Because he knows that he can’t. Not with this. “Fine.”

“I’m sorry that it’s hurting again,” Mark says, in a quieter voice this time. “But—well, you know—”

And Mark doesn’t need to finish that sentence, because Jaemin _knows_ , he knows, damn it. After over four hundred days of being away, this is all that he’s come to know, something he’d give up everything for, just to never know again.

But instead, Jaemin just nods stiffly before backing out of the room. He knows Jeno is staring at him, but Jaemin doesn’t have any words for him right now, the insides of his lungs already stripped raw from the guilt building up in his chest.

Jisung isn’t in the room when he gets back, which is just as well. He immediately shucks his pajamas and pulls on whatever the stylists picked for him to wear to the airport.

He’s in the middle of packing when Renjun comes in, a frown bowing that soft, sloping mouth of his.

Jaemin’s heart shudders, and he zips up his luggage. “Not going to eat breakfast?” he says, trying to sound casual.

It doesn’t work. “Why didn’t you say anything?” Renjun asks softly, subtle hurt coloring his words.

“Hmm?”

“Your back,” Renjun says, frowning even more still. Jaemin swallows, because worry is not a good look on Renjun, even when it’s directed at him.

“It’s manageable,” he says, and gives him his patented winning smile. “I’ll just go to the doctor like Mark-hyung said. Don’t worry.” Jaemin stands in front of him with his hands on his shoulders and gives them a quick squeeze. “Let’s go eat breakfast, okay?”

But Renjun is still frowning, staring up at Jaemin, and their difference in height is much too noticeable now. “Are you sure you’re okay, Jaemin-ah?”

From where he’s standing, Jaemin can count the beauty marks on his face and every single one of his eyelashes. The CC cream he’s wearing is a shade too pale for him, but Renjun is still beautiful, even all wrapped up in his worry. Jaemin wonders what it would be like to tell him this, but instead he sweeps the cap right off of Renjun’s head and plops it onto his own. “Now I am!”

“Jaemin-ah—” Renjun protests, flushing, and runs after him when Jaemin starts down the hall, laughing. “The fans will talk—”

“So?” Jaemin calls over his shoulder, heart racing. “Let them—”

He collides into someone at the top of the stairs, and when he steps back it’s Jeno blinking at him.

“Breakfast downstairs,” he says.

Jaemin swallows and pushes past him, pointedly ignoring the way Jeno’s eyes are trained on the back of his head.

 

 

 

“How’s this?”

Dr. Shin has her hand in the small of his back as Jaemin stretches, pushing down to test the flex of his muscles. Again, the pain comes in white hot and horrible, but only for a second, and when she pulls away it recedes like the tide.

“It hurts,” Jaemin says quietly.

Dr. Shin nods and makes a note on her tablet. “When did you start feeling the pain?”

Jaemin glances over to where Mark and their manager are sitting next to the examining table, and back to Dr. Shin. “About four days ago. I was practicing late at night, and we have this move—” He mimes it with his arms, and Mark’s face darkens with recognition at which part he’s referring to, sitting up straighter in his chair. “It just—came back really suddenly.”

“Hmm.” Dr. Shin frowns down at her screen, then back up at the manager. Jaemin can feel his mouth go dry. The look on her face is all too familiar.

“Your discs are inflamed,” she says, looking back and forth between all three of them. “Most likely you overexerted yourself doing whatever you were doing.”

“How bad is it?” Their manager cuts in, crossing his arms.

Dr. Shin eyes him from over the tops of her glasses. “I would have him rest for a month.”

Ice floods his stomach. “A _month_ …?” And when Jaemin meets Mark’s eyes, he can see the same look of disbelief.

Their manager shakes his head, expression stony. “That’s just not possible.”

“I was afraid of that,” Dr. Shin sighs, and puts down her iPad. “The only other option is an epidural.”

Silence thunders throughout the room, something Jaemin can only recognize because of the ringing in his ears, staring down hard at the linoleum. He knows that this is not his choice to make. Even if it were his choice, Jaemin knows deep inside of him that the outcome would still be the same. Because this is his only chance, a chance he doesn’t deserve, and God forbid if he doesn’t take it.

Jaemin nods mutely, and Mark lets out a noisy breath.

"Give me about ten minutes to prepare," Dr. Shin says curtly, gathering up her iPad. "You'll probably want to remove your shirt."

After she leaves, Ari gives Jaemin a look that's could have been apologetic. "Let this be a lesson to you," he says quietly, and Jaemin doesn't answer, just tugs his shirt off over his head and hoists himself up onto the examining table.

Mark's eyes are trained on the small of Jaemin's back. "Have you ever had a—" He frowns. "What is it called?"

"Epidural injection," Jaemin mumbles dully. "Once, at the beginning of last year."

"Does it hurt?"

"Yeah, kind of," Jaemin says, turning to face the wall, his back facing out toward where Dr. Shin would stand. "It just feels like a lot of pressure in one spot. It's not terrible, but not exactly pleasant either."

Mark makes a face. "No thanks."

Jaemin sighs, running his arms up and down his biceps, listening to the pinging notifications of Mark's phone go off behind him. Mark is most likely updating everyone else with what's going on. Jaemin's phone is with Ari, so he can't see what they're all messaging back in reply.

Dr. Shin returns with the local anesthetic, the procedure needle, and iodine solution. Jaemin tenses up, gripping the edge of the examining table.

"You'll need to lie on your side," Dr. Shin says gently, and Jaemin nods.

"Jaemin-ah," Mark stands up from his chair and takes a tentative step forward. "Do you—do you need me to—?"

His first instinct is to say no, to keep the struggle and the pain to himself the way he's been doing for all his life. But then Jaemin remembers that it is precisely because he didn't reach out to anyone that he's here in this situation. That Mark is just trying to be the leader he knows he should be. That it wouldn't hurt Jaemin to allow himself to lean on someone every once in a while. So Jaemin glances over his shoulder, eyes going back and forth between his manager and Mark, and nods.

Mark immediately goes to edge around the back of the table, holding his hand out awkwardly. Jaemin takes it, feeling the back of his neck flush hot.

"You can put your hand on his shoulder like this," Dr. Shin instructs Mark, and Mark complies. His palm is slightly sweaty, but Jaemin grips tight to it anyway, breathing in deep with his chest.

"I'll do the anesthesia first. There will be a pinch."

Mark's face blanches, but he squeezes Jaemin's hand reassuringly. "You can do this, Jaemin-ah."

Jaemin tries to smile back and thinks back to the first time he'd done this procedure, here in this very same hospital. Only that time he was alone, with nothing to look forward to except the thought of spending a year without the six people he'd grown to cherish, a year of silent dinners and even more silent nights alone in his childhood bedroom.

This is much better. Knowing that he has people like Mark and Ari who will let Jaemin lean on them. Like Jeno, who will confront him to do the things that Jaemin doesn't want to do. Like Jisung, Chenle, and Donghyuck, who will never hesitate to cheer him up, to make him smile. Or like Renjun, whom Jaemin still can't quite figure out.

Dr. Shin puts his hand on his back. "Are you ready? Take a deep breath."

Jaemin inhales slowly and closes his eyes.

 

 

 

The knock at his door startles him out of his nap, and Jaemin looks up over his blankets to find Ten poking his head into his room, holding a can of Coke.

"Yah, Jaemin-ah, are you awake now?"

Jaemin sits up and winces at the tender pull in his back, a side effect of the procedure needle.

Ten flaps his hand at him. “Don’t strain yourself, I’ll come sit,” he says before promptly flopping onto the foot of Jaemin’s bed and giving him a pointed look. “So.”

Jaemin blinks. “Hyung?”

“Mark told me what happened,” Ten says evenly, pulling at one of the stray threads in Jaemin’s duvet. “Are you still sore?”

“Oh,” Jaemin says. He flushes under the weight of Ten’s stare. “It’s more sore now, but the actual pain hasn’t gotten worse.”

Another knock causes them both to look up in time to see Renjun enter with a plate of one of their prepared meals—boiled chicken breast and brown rice—nothing special. Renjun flushes at the sight of Ten sitting on Jaemin’s mattress. “Sorry, I thought I heard that Jaemin was awake,” he mumbles.

Ten raises an eyebrow. "Aw, Renjunnie, are you bringing Jaeminnie his dinner? How cute."

Jaemin can’t help but smile at that, shaking his head. "The anesthetic made me a little nauseous. You can put it here and I'll get to it later."

"Thanks Renjunnie," Ten says sweetly, and Renjun apparently takes this as his cue to leave, setting his food on the bedside table before shutting the door behind him. Jaemin is sorry to see him go, but has the distinct feeling that Ten is there to speak to him and him only.

"Sucks, doesn’t it.”

Jaemin, in the middle of reaching over for his food, gives him a startled look. "Uh, it’s not terrible," he says truthfully, and pokes at it with the plastic fork Renjun had left for him. "A little bland, but I'm not complaining."

"I’m not talking about that, silly. I mean your back.”

Almost reflexively, Jaemin finds himself tensing up at his words, but it’s only when Ten affixes him with a straightforward look that he takes a breath and pushes down the momentary rush of anxiety.

Ten smiles wryly. “Did they tell you the same bullshit they told me? You’re being too careless, you’re being reckless, don’t risk it?”

Jaemin stares, because this is not the conversation he’d expected.

“It fucking sucks,” Ten says again, this time with feeling. He flops back on Jaemin’s bed, frowning up at the ceiling. “And no matter what you tell them, it’s always going to be your fault. They’re always going to find a way to punish you for trying to do what you love.”

Jaemin sits up suddenly, eyes drifting to Ten’s knee, and he looks down at his bowl, his chest suddenly tight. "Did you feel like this too?" he asks before he can stop himself. "Like you're trapped in your own body and can't even force it to do what you want?"

Ten smiles blithely. "I'm only telling you this because I don't want you to make it worse. I kept dancing on my bad knee, Jaemin, and I fucked it up in the end. I was really lucky to be able to even get surgery. Because if I didn't have that option, my career would've been as good as over."

Jaemin swallows, remembering Dr. Shin's words come back to him. "My back was my fault, I know."

"It was," Ten agrees readily, "But I don't blame you. Just trust me when I say that these next upcoming weeks will be hard. You're going to want to push yourself. I know this because I'm the same way. But don't. You'll regret it in the end."

Jaemin nods quickly, flushing a little. "Your knee now—how is it?"

"Hm?" Ten jiggles his leg nonchalantly. "Eh, you know, whatever,” he says, even though Jaemin gets the distinct feeling that it’s not just _whatever_.

But before he can bring this up, Ten hops off Jaemin's bed. "Enjoy your dinner!"

 

 

 

The call comes on a Tuesday, startling him out of his sleep at six in the morning. It’s one of their days off, but it doesn’t stop Jaemin from shooting his arm out of his blankets to answer on reflex, mumbling a croaky hello into the darkness.

“Jaemin-ah?”

And Jaemin sits up straight in his bed, all traces of sleep gone from his eyes. It’s his father.

“Dad? Why’re you calling me so early? Is everything alright?”

It’s the prolonger pause that has Jaemin clutching his phone tight, and then his father sighs. “It’s your mother.”

Jaemin swallows, a horrible, sinking feeling in his chest. “What about mom?”

“She’s not well, Jaemin. You need to come home.”

This isn’t the first time Jaemin has heard these words, but it’s the first time in a very long while. He knows how this part goes, he knows what this means. This isn’t the part he likes to talk about, the storm that hangs over him whenever his phone lights up with KakaoTalk messages he knows will go unanswered, or the wire-thin coil of guilt that wraps around his throat when he thinks of home.

“Jaemin-ah?”

“Yeah,” Jaemin says, and quietly gets out of bed. He balances his phone on his shoulder as he rummages around in his closet for a backpack. “Yeah, I’ll go.”

“How soon can you be here?” His father sounds distant now, almost as if distracted. “I have to leave soon.”

“We don’t have schedules today, but I have to talk to my manager.”

“Okay.”

Jaemin pads outside quietly to knock gently on one of the bedroom doors, trying to stay calm when Ari opens it, bedraggled and half-asleep.

“Hyung,” he begins, and Jaemin hates the way anxiety pitches his voice high and thin, swallows, tries again. “Hyung, I know it’s really early, but I have to go home. My dad just called me, and my mom’s not well.”

Ari rubs his eyes, sighing heavily. “Right now? What’s wrong with your mom?”

Jaemin swallows again, and avoids his eyes, fixating on the room inside. The other bed is empty, Chenle at home with his aunt for the week. “She’s… sick.”

Ari grunts and leans in the doorway. “Is it an emergency?”

“I think so.”

“Okay,” he says, and shuffles back into his room. “Let me call Hyunjoon and I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

Jaemin freezes, because he hadn’t thought about this. “I can just… take a taxi.”

Ari turns around to stare at him. “I can’t let you go alone.”

“Please,” Jaemin says, and maybe there’s something that Ari can see in his face, hear in his voice, because he stops and gives him a long, searching look. “I’ll be okay.”

“This is breaking company policy, do you know that?”

“Yes,” Jaemin says, with his heart in his throat, beating like it’s about to die.

“Take your phone and cover your face.”

“Yes, hyung.”

Jaemin ducks back into his room to gather up his things, making sure he has his phone, charger, wallet, and external battery before going back outside to slip on his shoes.

“Jaemin-ah?”

Jaemin turns around, everything in his body tightening up at that small, tired voice. Renjun is peeking through the doorway of his room, squinting in the dim light.

Renjun closes his door. “Where are you going?”

Panic seizes Jaemin’s chest, and he clutches the straps of his backpack, suddenly six years old again and watching his father escort his mother, crying and screaming, out the front door of his aunt’s house. _Mommy, where are you going?_

“Jaemin-ah—”

“I have to go home for something,” Jaemin forces out, voice thick and tight, tongue clumsy in his mouth. “I’ll be back tonight.”

Renjun frowns, taking a step forward. He’s wearing mismatched socks, and it would’ve been cute if Jaemin weren’t trying to think of any other way to get out of this conversation. “Did you tell Ari-hyung?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles, and stands there in front of the door, one hand on the handle, the other shoved deep into his pocket, his heart trying to leap out of his chest.

“He’s letting you go alone?” Renjun presses, and he’s getting that look on his face, that tentative, worried, distant look that sticks to every single one of Jaemin’s ribs. Jaemin hates that Renjun has to tiptoe around all the pieces of himself that he doesn’t want to talk about.

“Jaemin-ah,” Renjun says, quieter now, softer now. “What’s wrong?”

Jaemin feels his hand turn the knob, and he pulls up his facemask. “Don’t worry about me,” he mumbles. “You should still get some sleep.”

He turns away and leaves before Renjun can say anything else, the back of his throat tasting like bile.

 

 

 

The 40,000-won taxi ride from Cheongdam-dong to Incheon takes a little under an hour, and Jaemin spends most of it leaning with his head against the window, trying to stifle the building anxiety in his chest. His phone vibrates ten minutes in, and Jaemin fishes it out, almost half-expecting it to be Renjun. But instead, it just reads _Text me when you’re at home_. It’s from Ari.

Jaemin sighs and puts his phone away, watching the cars and the streets outside for the rest of the ride.

He has the taxi drop him off a block from his house, making the brisk walk there with his head and eyes down toward the sidewalk. The lights are all off inside, and Jaemin finds himself swallowing before letting himself in.

“Mom?” he calls, taking a tentative step into the foyer, but only silence answers. Jaemin slips off his shoes and makes his way into the kitchen.

His mother is standing at the sink, staring at the wall, hands wrist-deep into a sink of soapy water. Jaemin walks up quietly behind her and wraps hands around her shoulders. “Mom,” he mumbles, trying to pull her hands from the water. “Mom, it’s okay, let me do it.”

“Jaemin-ah,” she whispers, her eyes blank and unfocusing. She blinks and tears slide down her face. Jaemin tries easing her backwards again, and her hands emerge, pruned and wrinkled and shaking.

“That’s it,” Jaemin mutters, slowly walking her away from the sink. “Just let me—” He reaches for the dish towel to dry her hands, but suddenly she grabs his wrist, her fingers cold and unyielding like steel. Jaemin looks up, panicked. “Mom—”

“You know,” she whispers, gripping his wrist almost hard enough to bruise. “I always wondered why you wanted a sister, Jaemin-ah.”

“ _Mom_ ,” Jaemin says, trying to keep the panic from edging into his voice, and tries desperately to pry her hand off his wrist. “Mom, you’re hurting me—”

His mother blinks again, letting go of his wrist, and it’s like something in her face clears. She steps forward to cup his face. “My only son,” she breathes, stroking his cheeks and leaving traces of soapy water. “My Jaeminnie, I’m so glad you’re here—”

With shaking hands, Jaemin pulls his mother’s hands from his face, swallowing hard over the panic-hardened lump in his throat. “Please,” he begs, quiet and tired. “Please go lie down, mom.”

And it’s only when his mother finally gives in and goes to her room that Jaemin is finally able to compose himself in the silence, regret and guilt coursing hot and thick through his veins.

His phone vibrates again, and Jaemin reads it with embarrassment blooming in his stomach—another message from their manager.

_Are you at home?_

_No_ , Jaemin thinks miserably. Home is the place he’d left behind.

But _Yes_ is what he texts back. Jaemin puts his phone down on the counter and closes his eyes.

He knows how this part goes.

And so Jaemin stoops down without another word, beginning to clean up the pieces of the plate that his mother had dropped.

 

 

 

The taxi drops him off in Cheongdam-dong the next morning, and Jaemin stumbles blearily inside, exhaustion ringing his eyes with shadows. He knows that their TV program isn't until the afternoon, but Jaemin doesn't want to take any chances. When he pushes the door open, there’s a gentle clinking of plates and the soft murmur of a meal being served. Jaemin slips off his shoes and makes his way slowly to the kitchen. Someone—he suspects Chenle or Renjun—has attempted to make food, the smell wafting into the foyer.

He makes it as far as the kitchen entrance when Jisung looks up over his soup, broth dripping down his chin. “Where’d you go yesterday, hyung? Ari-hyung said you went home.”

Jaemin sets his bag down on the counter and skirts around the question easily. “Yeah, I went home.”

Renjun is silently eating his rice, pointedly not making any eye contact with Jaemin. Guilt brews hot in his gut, rising up to flood his face.

Chenle shoves a spoonful of tofu in his mouth. “How come?”

Jaemin sits down at the table, trying to swallow back his anxiety. “We didn’t have any schedules and I wanted to see my parents.” The lie turns his words to ash in his mouth, but he prays that none of them question it. “What did hyung tell you?”

“Said it was none of our business,” Jisung says, scrunching up his nose.

“Sounds _mysterious_ ,” Chenle snickers.

“Leave it alone, you two,” Jeno says abruptly, and both Chenle and Jisung shut up.

They spend the rest of lunch eating dinner in silence until Renjun stands up, his face infuriatingly blank, and excuses himself. Jaemin picks at his food for the rest of the meal, unsure if Renjun is upset with him or not.

They usher them all to the TV studios around three in the afternoon, and Jaemin closes his eyes as the stylist sweeps her makeup brush across his eyelids, listening to her chide him about his dark circles, and tries to push the previous day out of his mind.

In the studio, Renjun sits in front of him, so Jaemin stares at the back of his head for the majority of the interview, smiling when he's supposed to and answering the questions that the MC throws at them. He even manages to throw in some winks and cheesy lines, charming the hosts with his usual broad smile.

"But Renjun is unusually quiet today, isn't he?" one of the hosts asks, and even though Jaemin can't see, he's sure Renjun is blushing.

"I'm a little tired," Renjun admits, and Mark pats his knee. The MC moves on, and Jaemin isn't sure if he's imagining that Renjun is ignoring him.

The quietude lasts until they get home later that night, Jaemin plugging in his heating pad and scrolling listlessly on his phone. The door opens and Renjun steps him, the line of his mouth tense and brows furrowed.

Jaemin sits up, swallowing. "Aren't you tired?"

Renjun lets himself into the room and closes the door. "I wanted to talk to you."

Jaemin nods, scooting over to make room for Renjun to sit.

"I know you were at home for a while," Renjun begins, his voice quiet and tentative. It's hard to listen to him this way, and Jaemin knows that Renjun is trying so hard to not crush the eggshells Jaemin has laid out around him. "Is there anything wrong?"

"Are you talking about yesterday?" Jaemin looks up at him, and briefly, for the first time in what seems like days, Renjun makes eye contact with him. And in his eyes, Jaemin sees the worry there, the incredulous hurt.

"I know it's none of my business," Renjun says, breaking eye contact to look down at his lap. "But you don't need to keep it all to yourself. You can tell me, if you want to."

Jaemin swallows back the defensive no that he wants to spill out, and crosses his legs over his covers. "My mom is… sick."

Renjun frowns. "Sick?"

"Not like, physically." Jaemin sighs, scrolling through his phone again. Somehow, he opens up his photos app and flicks through the pictures, not really seeing.

The understanding in Renjun's faces comes very slowly, his mouth making a small O. "As in…"

Jaemin looks again to meet Renjun's eyes. "What is it like, having seven noonas?"

Renjun frowns, clearly taken aback. "Uh—it's… nothing special. No privacy, they teased me a lot. Always something going on, I guess. Why…?"

Jaemin smiles wanly. "Did you know I asked for a sister when I was little?" He shakes his head. "Home was really lonely back then, and I didn't like being by myself." Jaemin sighs. "I still don't."

"What does that have to do with your mom?"

"Well, my parents didn't want another child. My mom especially. But I kept nagging and annoying them, and finally they gave in."

Comprehension is beginning to dawn on Renjun's face, but Jaemin can see that the whole truth still hasn't sunken in. "And…?" he whispers.

"My mom was pregnant," Jaemin says simply, and even now voicing the words aloud slices all the old wounds open anew, and he remembers being six years old and crying in his room, not understanding why his mother was screaming, not understanding why his father wouldn't look him in the eye. "And then… she wasn't."

Renjun stares at him, eyes hard and shining. Jaemin knows the moment it clicks, because a flush rises high in his cheeks. "Jaemin-ah," Renjun says softly, his voice hushed and sorrowful. "Jaemin-ah, I'm so sorry. That's…"

"It's fine," Jaemin says quickly, looking away, embarrassed. "It was a long time ago."

"But it's not fine, is it?" Renjun continues, and Jaemin looks up, startled. "Something must have happened. That's why you went home yesterday, right?"

And when Jaemin doesn't answer, Renjun bites his lip. "Jaemin-ah," he says. "Whatever is going on with your mom… it's not your fault."

"I know it's not," Jaemin says, perhaps more sharply than he intended to, because Renjun flinches. "But it gets harder and harder for a ten-year-old to tell himself that when your parents won't look at each other anymore."

Renjun stares at him, face drawn and tight, and looks like he withdraws into himself. "I'm… sorry."

Jaemin shrugs, swallowing over the lump in his throat. "It's fine," he says, lying back on his bed to stare up at his ceiling. It reminds him of when he was younger, listening to his mother crying in the kitchen while he'd tried to make constellations out of the cracks in the plaster.

The bed shifts after a moment, and Renjun lies back, too. This is the closest he and Renjun have been while alone since Jaemin had returned, but somehow it still feels like Renjun is leagues of distance away. And Jaemin dreams, maybe. He dreams of telling Renjun about the skating rink, about falling on his hands and cutting up his palms on the ice. He dreams of telling him about how he learned to cook because his mother wouldn't do it for him anymore. He dreams of, one day, being able to face his mother and know where her mind is and know that it’s there, _with_ her, and not left behind in that operating room so many years ago.

_Tell Mark-hyung about your back._

_You don't need to keep it all to yourself._

"Jaemin-ah," Renjun asks him after a while, his voice small and soft. "Do you think I'm quiet?"

 _No_ , Jaemin thinks to himself, no.

Not when Renjun fills the space in his ears with clamoring bells, not when Renjun’s laugh, his eyes, his smile all claw so desperately into the silence, roaring loud, loud, so loud.

 

 

 

“We need to talk,” Jeno tells him one evening after practice. “And you don’t get to say no.”

Jaemin winces, wiping his face with the hem of his shirt as they file back into the dorm. “Why does it sound like you’re about to lecture me?”

Jeno nudges Jaemin into his room before anyone else can say anything. “Because I probably am.”

Jaemin sighs and sits down on the edge of his bed. “Look, I went and told Mark-hyung about my back like you said I should. I’ve been watching myself. You still want to micromanage me?”

“It’s not about your back,” Jeno says, leaning back against his door.

Jaemin raises an eyebrow at him. “Then what?”

Jeno crosses his arms. “Renjun.”

All at once, his stomach knots up into painful little whorls, and Jaemin immediately averts his gaze. “What about Renjun?”

“What’s going on between you two, seriously?”

“Nothing. We’re fine.”

Jeno sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Jaemin-ah, I’m not trying to antagonize you, I swear. I just—you’re my best friend. It’s hard to see you do this to yourself.”

Jaemin finally glances up, and Jeno’s expression is much softer than he expected. One of the knots in his stomach slowly unravels.

“And Renjun is my friend too,” Jeno says, quieter. “I don’t want to see either of you get hurt.”

Jaemin looks down at his knees. There is so much that he could say, so much that he _wants_ to say, but so little that will actually be said. “Jeno-yah,” he begins quietly. “Do you even know how I’m feeling?”

And when Jeno winces slightly, Jaemin can’t help but feel that guilty pang again. “I don’t,” Jeno admits, brows knitting together. “You’re right. I don’t know how you feel.”

There aren’t many people who do. This isn’t a surprise to him anymore, just another reminder of that deep, resounding sadness he’s come to accept.

“But—”

Jaemin looks up, and Jeno is giving him this odd little half-smile.

“—I do see how you look at him, Jaemin-ah, and it’s… enough.”

For just a moment, the silence is thunderous loud, punctuated only by the beats of his heart as Jaemin stares up at his best friend, desperately searching for the scrutiny that is not there. Jeno only gazes back at him, expression mild but not unkind, and Jaemin thinks that—maybe—they’ll be okay.

Jaemin swallows. “And just how do I look at him?” he asks softly.

Jeno heaves a deep sigh. “Like every second you blink is a whole lifetime stolen. Like—” He screws up his face, clearly trying to search for the right words. “Like forever could never be long enough.”

 

 

 

Dubai welcomes them in a gust of dry, scorching wind. Jaemin rubs his eyes and blinks up at an electric-blue sky that seems far too surreal, too Technicolor for this world.

Their group is noisy, but at this point the staff have already given up on trying to make them all less conspicuous. It’s a fool’s effort anyway, because EXO and TVXQ attract too much attention.

The wind sucks his skin dry, and Jaemin licks his lips, standing closer to Yukhei in hopes that his bulk will block some of the wind while they all wait for the private vans that will take them to their hotel. Renjun is standing a little ways up the curb, looking down at his phone, AirPods tucked snugly into his ears. Jaemin swallows around a dry mouth.

“ _Bizarre_ , isn’t it?” says a voice in his ear, and Jaemin glances around to see EXO’s Baekhyun grinning at him. Jaemin smiles out of reflex.

“You were here in January, right, hyung?”

“It wasn’t this hot back then,” Baekhyun complains, and cracks his neck to the side. “But it still looked like this—” He gestures to the city, all picture-perfect and immaculate skyscrapers. “Like a postcard.”

Jaemin shoves his hands into his pockets and looks at the city, the planes taking off and landing in the desert air. “But even a postcard doesn’t show all of the city. It can’t be this perfect all the time.”

“True,” Baekhyun says evenly, and gazes out thoughtfully at the towering buildings, glittering with their windows in the sunlight. “But no one wants to see the ugly side of the city, am I right?”

Baekhyun turns back to stare at him evenly, and Jaemin gets the distinct sense that Baekhyun is no longer talking about Dubai.

Jaemin swallows. “Right.”

Baekhyun chuckles low in his throat, and squeezes his shoulder. “It gets easier.”

Jaemin is almost certain that Baekhyun has no idea what Jaemin is thinking about, but it doesn’t stop his words from helping just the tiniest bit.

 

 

 

"Jeno," Ari says. "Jisung."

Jeno and Jisung take their key cards, all of them crowded around Ari in the elevator of their hotel. The Address at Dubai Mall is a tall, looming jewel of a high-rise, the rich metallic finishes and plush fabric fixtures making everything seem a touch more exotic.

"Chenle," Ari continues, handing off the key card with a small, indulgent smile. "You're with me."

Chenle cheers silently, pumping his fist. Jaemin swallows thickly, glancing to his side. So that means—

"Jaemin, Renjun."

Renjun takes his key card from Ari without a word, and for a brief moment their eyes meet. Jaemin tries to smile, but Renjun only stares at him before breaking eye contact.

The confusion persists even as he follows Renjun down the hall to their room, holding the door open for him from behind.

"Do you want the window?"

Renjun turns around, eyebrows drawn together. "What?"

Jaemin points at the bed closest to the windows. "The window. You like the natural light, don't you?"

"Oh," Renjun says, then swallows. "Uh, sure. Thanks, I guess."

Jaemin dumps his backpack on the second bed, licking his lips. "No problem."

The silence hangs heavy between them as they unpack, Renjun scattering his charging wires everywhere across his covers and Jaemin lining up his medications on the bedside table.

"Did I tell you I like natural light?"

Jaemin glances over his shoulder. Renjun is sitting cross-legged on his bed, tugging at two of his cables that are tangled together.

"No?"

Renjun locks eyes with him. "Then how'd you know?"

"I pay attention to you," Jaemin says, matching his gaze. "I always have."

Renjun returns it only for a few more moments, before looking away. "Oh."

Jaemin doesn't know what to say to that, so a few more minutes pass by this way, with Jaemin failing miserably at trying not to watch Renjun plug his things into the wall.

"Shit," Renjun says softly. "I forgot my humidifier."

Jaemin presses his lips together to stop himself from making whatever face he's sure would have gotten him in trouble. "Here," he says, pulling out a small portable kind that takes a water bottle.

The sound of disbelief that Renjun makes is almost heartbreaking. "Don't tell me you brought that just because you knew I'd forget mine."

The truth is that Jaemin brings a humidifier with him every time he travels, but he doesn't tell Renjun this, just sets it on the bedside table near his bed. "You can use it."

Renjun picks it up, not saying anything for a few seconds, then glances up at him with the kind of hesitance that makes Jaemin's heart feel like it's pressing up right against his ribs. "Are you just messing with me?"

Jaemin swallows over a dry mouth. He hates that Renjun doesn't sound like he's joking in the slightest. "Of course not."

Renjun puts the humidifier back on his table with an unreadable expression on his face before putting in his AirPods.

Jaemin leans back into the hotel pillows, dutifully ignoring the way his blood pressure spikes with anxiety. To distract himself, he pulls up KakaoTalk on his phone and scrolls through his contact list.

**_☆jaemin☆_ **

hyung, would a postcard with an ugly photo sell?

**_Baekhyunnie-hyung 'ㅅ'_ **

응… depends on who's buying

**_☆jaemin☆_ **

what if you don't know what they want to buy?

**_Baekhyunnie-hyung 'ㅅ'_ **

then you've got nothing to lose, jaeminnie ㅋㅋ

Jaemin stares at his phone, his thoughts in a million different places at once, before it pings again.

**_Baekhyunnie-hyung 'ㅅ'_ **

don't forget we're going to the desert tomorrow!!

Jaemin sends back a sticker and then puts it away with a sigh. "Hey," he begins, "make sure that you don't wear shorts tomorrow—" Jaemin turns over back to Renjun, but Renjun is already asleep.

 

 

 

The first time that Jaemin wins, he is twelve, and his gloves are still too big for his hands. He remembers the feeling of the ice slick beneath his blades, the way all the air in the rink seemed to coalesce around his body and push him around the final bend. Jaemin especially remembers the moment he passed by the skater in first, not wanting to look back and see all the other skaters behind him. Because Jaemin is a boy who has built himself up on his connections with others, but in speed skating he has to leave them all in his wake. His victory is only by fractions of a second, but on that vast expanse of a rink that gap seems insurmountable.

It feels very much the same, he thinks, to be standing there on the edge of the Dubai desert between Chenle and their manager, gazing out into the ever-receding horizon and shading his eyes from the sandy winds.

"Doesn't it just make you feel so small?" Chenle whispers to him, looking all too ridiculous with one of his T-shirts wrapped around his head.

Jaemin laughs weakly in spite of himself. "I suppose it does."

"It's like—" Chenle continues. "You're actually just insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and nothing you do will ever actually matter. It's kind of scary."

Jaemin's eyes wander to Renjun standing a little ways off, baseball cap obscuring his face as he takes photos with his phone. "I guess we're all just a little scared of what we don't know for certain."

Jaemin must have sounded particularly wistful, because Chenle presses up against his side then, looking up at him with an apologetic smile on his face. "Hyung must have had a lot of uncertain things in his life, huh?"

Jaemin heart's swells a little bit, and he laughs, putting his arm around him even though it's hot and his forearm sticks to Chenle's shoulders. "Maybe a little bit. But I'm in a better place now."

Chenle beams up at him, and at least, Jaemin thinks, he'll have this.

He remembers being twelve and winning his first race, the inexplicable loneliness of that rink, the gap between first and second. It feels very much the same, standing in between Chenle and their manager on the edge of the Dubai desert, the mere five feet gap between him and Renjun feeling like so much more, like miles and miles of sand.

 

 

 

They arrive at the Autism Rocks Arena in the early afternoon, and the staff ushers them all to the dressing rooms—multitudes of outdoor trailers behind the venue, thankfully all air-conditioned.

One of the coordis pulls Renjun out of the trailer immediately after he's done with hair and makeup, but Jaemin is too busy getting his hair styled to dwell on the thoughts that continue to crowd the corners of his mind. He's just about finished when another staff member taps him on the shoulder.

"Jaemin-ssi, we want to film you outside for the behind-the-scenes reel."

Jaemin blinks. "With Renjun?"

She nods, motioning for him to follow her, and Jaemin exchanges a look with Jeno before following her outside.

Renjun is standing a few feet away, fiddling with a DSLR camera, and turns around at the sound of them approaching. His face is carefully composed, politely obliging the staff person who beckons for him to give her the camera.

"Renjun-ssi, could you please stand here—" She motions, and then directs Jaemin to another spot. "And then Jaemin-ssi, we'll film you taking photos of him—"

Jaemin almost the drops the camera she thrusts into his hands, and he glances over at Renjun hesitantly. Renjun gives him one of his stage smiles and poses. Jaemin finds himself giving a smile back, dropping down into a squat to take a photo. At least, he thinks, it is easy to fall into this routine. This is something that comes naturally to him. Renjun—on the other hand—is a different story entirely.

The staff member has them do a couple of other things on film, like introducing their set list and fooling around some more before looking up from her video camera with a smile. "That was good! Thank you Renjun-ssi, Jaemin-ssi."

Renjun only smiles at her before bowing to excuse himself. Jaemin hangs behind, watching the footage on her camera screen. "Do you think we'll make the final cut, noona?"

She laughs. "I don't see why not. You both play very well off each other. There's just that extra little something special, you know?"

Jaemin's heart leaps up into his mouth, his laughter coming out high and nervous. "Y-yeah, makes sense!"

When she leaves for SHINee's trailer, Jaemin goes back inside. Renjun is sitting in the corner with Jisung playing a phone game, so Jaemin sits back down next to where Jeno is getting his hair misted with hairspray.

"Filming go all right?" Jeno asks him. The stylist has him facing the mirror, but Jeno catches Jaemin's eye in the reflection.

"It was fine. They made me take pictures of him," Jaemin says evenly. Jeno raises an eyebrow at him and Jaemin decides he's not keen on his best friend trying to cross-examine him, opting instead to sit down next to Yukhei hopelessly trying to teach himself phrases in Arabic.

They all hear the concert begin, both on the staff members' walkie-talkies and by the thunderous roar from inside the arena. They sit around, restless, until all too soon the staffer claps her hands together and directs them inside.

Jaemin's not entirely sure what the others had been expecting, but when they first go out for Chewing Gum, the lights and the cheers nearly blow him away. Jaemin's performed for bigger crowds, he's sure, but being in Dubai makes this stage feel especially important. Especially with Mark and Donghyuck missing, the fact that they're only five of them on stage makes it all the more intimate.

He messes up during We Young and can sense Jisung laughing at him. Jaemin grins through it and rushes off stage with the rest of them, letting his heart pump adrenaline all around his body.

"No worries, hyung!" Chenle pipes up sunnily, giving him a soft nudge with his elbow. "I think I accidentally jumped a half-second too early. Plus you just barely learned the choreo, like, last month!"

Jaemin shakes his head, accepting the water bottle that Jeno brings him. "I was in front, too."

"You were fine," Jeno tells him, steering him back into their dressing room trailer. "The fans loved you. They were just happy to see you perform our song."

"Your song, you mean," Jaemin says, before he can stop himself.

"No," Jeno says firmly, and pinches his arm. "It's your song, too."

Jaemin shoves him away playfully, before letting his feet lead him to where Renjun's sat himself down in the makeup styling chair. "I didn't throw you too hard, did I?"

Renjun looks up at him, raising an eyebrow. "Why does that matter?" he asks, and even Jaemin is taken aback by the slight edge in his voice. "Wouldn't that have made for a cuter performance?"

Jaemin frowns, trying to formulate an answer that wouldn't make him sound like a jackass, when Jeno's voice cuts across the room. "He's making sure he doesn't hurt you, Renjun-ah."

Renjun looks over at Jeno like this is the first time he's seeing him with his own two eyes, like Jeno is speaking another language, and then looks back up at Jaemin. His mouth flattens into a thin line. "Just… nevermind."

Jaemin swallows and catches Jeno’s eye, who only shakes his head at him. Jaemin sighs and decides to leave their dressing room, standing outside in the evening air. A few short feet away, Jaemin can hear the cheers of their fans from inside the arena as SHINee performs their last song. He looks up, hoping to see stars, but is greeted with smog instead.

There's a small commotion to his left, and Jaemin watches as EXO, sweaty from dancing Power, spills out from backstage and makes a beeline for their dressing room. Jaemin circles back around behind their dressing room trailer, leaning against the wall, and goes back to being lost in his thoughts, frowning when Renjun's tight, frustrated face keeps returning to haunt him.

"Hyung—" A low, hushed voice cuts through the night air, followed by quiet giggles. Jaemin peeks around the corner of their trailer, seeing two figures standing in the gap between the NCT and EXO dressing rooms. Jaemin quickly pulls back behind the trailer before they can notice him.

More giggles. "Hyung, your mic is falling off—" Jaemin recognizes who it is; that whiny, nasally voice could belong to none other than EXO's Jongdae.

Then another voice: "Jongdae-yah—" Fond, endeared, a touch exasperated. "There are staff around—" Jaemin swallows again. EXO's leader Joonmyun.

"I _know_ , just—"

It's then that Jaemin peeks his head around just the tiniest bit, just in time to see Jongdae reach up to adjust the mic taped to Joonmyun's cheek. Joonmyun's back is to him, but Jaemin can see the look in his Jongdae’s eyes, the tenderness in his face that causes Jaemin's stomach to lurch with knowing.

Joonmyun catches Jongdae's wrist and holds it tenderly, whispers something low and intimate that Jaemin cannot hear.

Is it the ease of it, that quiet comfort shared between the two of them, that’s making Jaemin's heart ache so much, his stomach twist into uncomfortable knots? Jaemin pulls back behind the trailer again, listening as Joonmyun and Jongdae's whispers taper off into unintelligible murmurs lost to the night air.

 _I want that_ , Jaemin thinks suddenly, almost desperately, and swallows back the uncertainty that rises to the back of his throat like bile. He thinks of Renjun with grown-out, brassy hair; of his small, oval-shaped nails; of Renjun standing under Shinsegae's fluorescent lights. Of Renjun sitting in his room in candlelight with his brows furrowed, lines creasing under his eyes where there shouldn't be any, the spot on his wrist that's empty because Renjun hasn't worn his wrist cuff in months.

Jaemin remembers the way Joonmyun and Jongdae’s hands had intertwined, and something in Jaemin’s stomach tightens. _I want that._

Jeno gives him a slow up-and-down look when he comes back into the trailer. "The stylist was looking for you. What were you doing out there?"

"Just getting some fresh air," Jaemin says quietly. Jeno holds his gaze for a few moments, but then gives him a small nod. Jaemin returns it nervously, a gentle fluttering in his stomach.

Ari sticks his head into the small trailer, clearing his throat. "You're all on deck." Behind him, they all can hear BoA singing One Shot Two Shot. They follow him out of the trailer and back into the venue in the wings, watching as BoA rushes backstage and TVXQ take the stage.

Jaemin finds himself squished up behind Yukhei, letting The Chance of Love fill his ears. Renjun is ahead of him crowded next to Ten and Chenle, and Jaemin makes up his mind.

They spill out onto the stage in the opening notes of Hope, Jaemin momentarily blinded by the stage lights. But as his vision adjusts, he finds Renjun in the thick of it, and slowly edges past Jisung and Jeno.

It happens before he can stop himself, reaching out to grab Renjun's hand and lacing their fingers together. He can see it happen almost in slow motion, the way Renjun turns around, eyes widening with gentle surprise, and Jaemin is leaning in without thinking. Renjun's eyes widen even more, and for a second it's like they both forget that they are on stage with their seniors in front of thousands of their fans. But then the girls start to scream, and Renjun tugs his hand out of his grip and pushes past him, Jaemin awkwardly trying to look casual and not like he was just about to kiss his bandmate.

A solid body presses up against him, and Jeno gives him a consoling look. Jaemin inhales shakily and forces a smile past the panic in his body, because they're on stage now and he cannot let that missed moment ruin the performance for his company. He looks over down the stage and sees Renjun with Ten. It's hard to tell how he's feeling while he's smiling and waving to their fans, but that's not something Jaemin can blame him for. He has to do it, too.

They all hold hands and bow for the last time as the cheering explodes in his ears, and tries not to look Renjun in the eye as Ari ushers them all into the vans. Jaemin ends up in the backseat next to Jeno, who thankfully doesn't say anything. The tight feeling in his stomach doesn't go away, building up in his chest as they take their elevator up the many floors of the Address. The others bid them all good night, and soon it's just him and Renjun in the hall, Renjun's back to him as he inserts their key card, eerily quiet. Jaemin takes a deep breath, following him inside.

"Injun," he begins quietly.

Renjun ignores him, stooping down to fish around in his backpack for something. The leaden feeling in his stomach grows.

Jaemin steps closer, clearing his throat. "Injun-ah," he tries again, a little louder this time, and Renjun glances behind him, his face infuriatingly blank.

"What?"

Jaemin chews on his lip, momentarily taken aback. "I—about the closer."

Renjun stiffens, the line of his shoulders going sharp and tense. "What about it?"

"Are you mad…?"

Renjun stands up, crossing his arms. His eyes are sharp, distant, his mouth drawn tight. "I don't know, wouldn't you be kind of weirded out if your bandmate tried to kiss you onstage?"

"It wasn't that—" The words spill out before he can stop himself. "I was just being silly—"

"You can't just _do_ these kinds of things, Jaemin—" Renjun snaps, his voice bordering on high and shrill.

"It was just fanservice," Jaemin blurts out and immediately regrets it, hating the way it makes Renjun's face cloud up with hurt. "It was nothing, I do it all the time with Jeno—"

Renjun's eyes go bright and glassy, mouth quivering. "Just fanservice?"

Jaemin locks eyes with him, shoving his hands into the pockets of his pants, and nods.

Renjun laughs then, a hollow, heartbreaking sound. "So it's all just fanservice, right? Was the bracelet fanservice, too?"

Jaemin stares at him as if Renjun had reached up to slap him across the face, mouth gaping incredulously. "What— _no_ —that doesn't even—" Jaemin takes another shuddering breath. "You don't even _wear_ yours—"

"Because I can never tell what you're trying to do? I couldn't tell back then when you gave it to me, and I couldn't tell tonight—"

"What do you mean? It was a present—what else is there to think about? I gave you the bracelet because I wanted to, and tonight was just—" Jaemin swallows. "—'Cause I felt like it—"

"Well, newsflash, Jaemin, you're not the only person involved when you do these kinds of things—" And Jaemin suddenly remembers Jeno in his PJs and stupid socks and sandals, telling him _It doesn’t just affect you, Jaemin, it affects all of us._ "Maybe I'm the stupid one for thinking that they might have actually meant something—"

"But they did," Jaemin insists, trying to take a step forward but Renjun just backs away, his eyes now spilling over with slow tears. "I wouldn't have done it for just anyone—"

"Except Jeno," Renjun counters, tears now cutting tracks in his makeup. "And Jisung and Mark-hyung and everyone else, you said it yourself just now, didn’t you? It's just _fanservice_ —"

"That's not what I meant," Jaemin says. "I wasn't thinking—"

"I _know_ you weren't thinking. You never really think about these things, do you? You just do whatever you want and you don't ever think about how it could be making me feel.”

“Injun-ah,” Jaemin starts, heart in his mouth.

“No, shut up—” Renjun snaps, and the tears are flowing freely now. “Can you, for once in your life, just stop and think about what you’re doing? There are no cameras here, Jaemin, okay? This isn't another one of your airport photo ops, this is my _life_ —"

And before Jaemin can stop him, Renjun turns on his heel and runs out of the room, slamming the door shut, the sounds of his footsteps running down the hall fading.

And Jaemin stands there in the lush excess of their hotel room, covered in hairspray and glitter and wearing CC cream that's slowly starting to sweat off, and—suddenly, _horrifyingly_ —the hotel room feels like home.

 

 

 

Jaemin doesn't know how long he stands there in the oppressive silence of that room, Renjun's last words ringing in his ears, before he wills his legs to move. Every step feels like it takes so much effort, but Jaemin forces himself toward the door, stumbling out into the hall. Renjun is nowhere to be found.

The door next to theirs opens, and Jeno leans in the doorway, scrutinizing him with a cool gaze. "I heard yelling," is all he says.

And Jaemin is about to say something before Jeno just sighs and shoves his thumb over his shoulder. "He's in Ten-hyung's room," he says quietly, and Jaemin can't even bring himself to say thank you, just nods mutely and rushes down the hall toward the room where Ten and Yukhei are staying.

Jaemin knocks, heart pounding in his ears, and the door opens. He takes a deep breath, bracing himself, but whatever half-assed apology he'd been preparing dies on his tongue when Ten opens the door, the room behind him empty.

Ten raises an eyebrow at him. "Hmm? Looking for someone?"

Jaemin takes a step back, frowning. "I—"

Ten jerks his head behind him, lips curling up. "He's out on the balcony. If Renjunnie catches a cold, it's going to be your fault," he tells him sweetly. "So mind you hurry up." And then before Jaemin knows what's going on, Ten is pushing him into the room and closing the door, and then Jaemin is alone again.

Jaemin looks out the sliding glass door, and now he can see it—the shadowy outline of Renjun sitting outside on the balcony, looking very small. Jaemin's heart pounds deafeningly and he starts to walk over.

Renjun doesn't move or turn around when Jaemin slides the door open. He's still in his SMTown shirt and jeans, but hadn't brought a jacket with him, and Jaemin can see his shoulders shivering slightly from the night's chill.

Jaemin takes off his jacket and slowly walks up behind him, draping it gently over his shoulders, and that's when Renjun finally looks up. Jaemin's heart almost breaks in two then, because Renjun looks so hurt—eyes all red and puffy and tear tracks cutting streaks into his BB cream. Jaemin sits down next to him awkwardly, the gap between them obvious.

Renjun doesn't say anything, just digs his fingers into the lapels of Jaemin's jacket and silently tugs it around himself silently. And Jaemin knows that he has to say something, but the words are coming slow and stilted, like his throat is clogged up.

"You make me feel stupid sometimes," he says quietly, almost to himself, and Renjun makes a strange sound next to him, halfway between a scoff and a sob.

"So now it's _my_ fault?"

"No," Jaemin says quietly, and tamps down hard on the anxiety that's threatening to spill over again. "No, I feel stupid _around_ you. Like you have this paralyzing effect on me, and I can't think properly."

Renjun blinks at him for a second, then wraps his arms around his knees, withdrawing into himself. "How do you think I feel?" he mumbles softly.

"What…?" Jaemin asks, confusion beginning to dawn on him. Renjun makes the scoff-sob sound again, and shakes his head.

"Do you know what it's like," he begins quietly, "to be around someone who makes you so happy but so confused…? When this person hurts you because you can never tell what he's thinking, but even still—" Renjun turns away, making that shaky quivering inhaling noise you make right before you're about to cry. "You can't be mad at him."

Jaemin stares blankly back at him, and starts, a little dumbly, "Is this still about the bracelet? Because I really—that wasn't fanservice, I swear—"

Renjun shakes his head again. "It's about everything."

And Jaemin stays quiet for a few moments, dazed. Renjun is crying in front of him, but he's still pretty even with runny eyeliner and mottled cheeks. So Jaemin puts a hesitant hand on his shoulder, squeezing tight.

"I don't know about that last part," Jaemin says quietly. "But I do know what it's like to be around someone who makes me happy."

Renjun looks at him with questions in his eyes.

"This person kind of wears his heart on his sleeve," Jaemin smiles. "Maybe that's the kind of person I want to be?"

Renjun wipes his nose and mutters, dryly, "Well, you're kind of shit at it."

"I know," Jaemin says faintly. "It's a work in progress."

"You can start now." Renjun looks over at him, cheek pillowed on his arms, knees drawn up to his chest. "With me."

And Jaemin just stares at him and none of the right words are coming, because he doesn't think that _You're the most beautiful person I've ever laid eyes on_ would quite suffice for the moment. Renjun can probably see him struggle, because he gives Jaemin this very soft, slight smile.

"Use your words, Jaemin-ah."

And so Jaemin turns to him. "Just—"

But exactly just _what_ Jaemin doesn't get to finish, because he's reaching up to cup Renjun's face between his palms and kissing him, just like he's imagined doing ever since Renjun stood in Shinsegae Duty-Free under those yellow fluorescent lights and Jaemin wanted to kiss him through his face mask.

It’s brief and uncertain, Jaemin’s heart thundering in his ears, and for the briefest of moments, Jaemin swears that Renjun kisses him back just the tiniest bit.

But then Renjun pulls away, slowly opening his eyes, and Jaemin finds himself staring at him again, holding his breath.  

"That wasn't using your words," Renjun says quietly, but he's honest-to-god smiling.

Jaemin exhales, grinning weakly, and leans their foreheads together. "Close enough?"

Renjun bites his lip, face suffused in a lovely pink flush, and closes fingers over Jaemin’s hand. "Close enough."

 

 

 

The words come to him much later at two o’clock in the morning, when they’re sprawled out over the covers of Renjun’s bed still in their ending outfits, the curtains thrown open to let the Dubai skyline bathe them in orange-gold paint spills of light. Renjun is already asleep, but Jaemin is still so wide awake, and the words come to him in that silence.

They come low and hesitant, murmured quietly into the nape of Renjun’s neck, the faintest whisper of breath, a question, an answer.

These are words that Renjun cannot hear, but it doesn’t matter.

Because he will, in time.

 

 

 

The day after they arrive back in Seoul, Jaemin goes home.

This time, of his own volition. This time, he’s not alone.

Renjun is sitting between Jaemin and Ari in the back of the taxi, and Jaemin makes it a point to keep his eyes forward. This is enough, he thinks, for now.

Ari waits outside on the curb smoking a cigarette while Jaemin unlocks the front door. Right before he pulls it open, Renjun’s hand closes around his shoulder, and Jaemin turns around.

“Are you sure?” he asks quietly, and Jaemin only nods.

“I’m sure.” Then Renjun lets go and takes a step back. It’s space that Renjun knows that Jaemin needs, but it’s enough. Renjun is right behind him.

Jaemin steps into his childhood home for what seems like the millionth time, but it doesn’t change the way his body stiffens with unfamiliarity, the lack of warmth.

There’s a clatter in the living room, and Jaemin tenses up in the moment before his mother appears at the end of the hall. Her face is drawn and wan, and as her eyes find Jaemin’s face, he can see the way they widen.

He swallows. “Hi, mom.”

His mother’s face crumples, and the first rivulets of tears start to stream down her face. “Jaemin-ah,” she whispers, taking a teetering step toward him.

Then his mother begins to cry, and, for the first time in what seems like forever, Jaemin steps forward and holds her. His mother feels so frail in his arms, thin shoulders shaking with quiet, hoarse sobs.

“Jaemin-ah,” she cries, and Jaemin feels her fingers curl into his shirt. “Jaemin-ah.”

“I’m here,” Jaemin tells her, and doesn’t pull away even when her tears soak damp patches into his shirt. “I’m here.”

“Jaemin-ah,” his mother whispers, clinging to him. “I’ve been so lonely.”

“I know, mom,” he says, stroking her hair, and it doesn’t hurt. Jaemin doesn’t know how his heart chooses what hurts and what doesn’t, but this doesn’t hurt. “I’ve been lonely, too.”

It’s not the apology that he wanted. It’s not an absolution of guilt, it’s not an answer to the question he’s been carrying around inside of himself for over ten years. It’s not a solution. It doesn’t make the loneliness any more bearable, it still doesn’t make this house a home. It is none of these things, but—

Jaemin feels Renjun’s fingers prying into the fist of his free hand, and he opens. They slot in against Jaemin’s own, and Renjun is squeezing his hand tight, locking eyes with him over the top of his mother’s head. It’s not a fix, by any means.

But it is, at least, a start.

 

 

 

Jaemin is alone in the studio when he records his parts for their comeback album, singing his lines as if it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.

In some ways, maybe it is, because this is all he has left. The pain in his waist has ebbed down to a gentle throb, a reminder of the ephemerality of this industry, of how easy it is to be forgotten. But when he's done, the recording tech just nods at him like he gets it, like he _knows_ , and Jaemin thinks that maybe he's learning to expand and fill the spaces that have been left hollow inside of him.

 

 

 

“Imagine,” Renjun says, leaning against the railing. They’re on the roof of their dorm, staring out into the bustle of the city as the sun stains the sky ruby and amethyst in the dusk. “Next year, we can do all those late-night programs. And we won’t have to come back to hide in our rooms like kids.”

Jaemin inhales deeply, closing his eyes. “First thing I’m going to do is a four hour VLive.”

Renjun’s lips quirk. “Of course you would. You’re annoying like that.”

“Hey,” Jaemin says, mock affronted, and turns to face Renjun, smiling at him softly. “I was going to ask if you would do it with me. We’ve never had a VLive with just you and me.”

“And what makes you so sure that I’d want to do a VLive with you?”

Jaemin chuckles, looking back down into the streets, watching the street lights flicker on, the neon signs of restaurants and PC-bangs glowing in the distance. “I just had an inkling.”

There’s a soft click sound to his left, and Jaemin turns to Renjun holding up his phone, looking pleased.

“What are you doing?” Jaemin asks, and the corners of Renjun’s mouth curl up.

“I’m taking a picture.”

Jaemin quirks an eyebrow at him. “I thought you don’t take photos of people."

“Well,” Renjun says, a slow smile creeping across his face. “Someone has got to plaster your stupid face everywhere.”

Jaemin laughs and takes a step closer. “My face isn’t stupid,” he says quietly.

Renjun takes a step closer, too, looking up at him through his eyelashes. In the receding daylight, Renjun is already losing colors to the sunset, but everything about him is still beautiful, still takes his breath away. “No,” he murmurs. “No, it’s not.”

And maybe Jaemin kisses him then, cups Renjun’s cheeks and brings that soft, sloping mouth to his, and it’s better this time because Renjun isn’t crying and there’s no looming urgency to leave.

Maybe Renjun kisses back, tangles his fingers in the hair at the nape of Jaemin’s neck to tug him down into it, kisses all the breath right out of his lungs. Like he’s ready to give Jaemin everything that he’s asking for, everything Jaemin doesn’t know he’s asking for, and then some. And when Renjun pulls away, there’s a gentle twinkle in his eye. “What was it called again?”

“Hmm?

“Your fansite,” Renjun says, palm sliding down to rest on his shoulder. “The one you wanted me to make.”

“Oh,” says Jaemin, and shakes his head. “ _Finding Nana_? Something like that.”

Renjun looks at him for a long time, his features softening, and steps in close again. “So did anyone?”

Jaemin reaches down to link their fingers, and down by their wrists there is a fleeting flash of silver, and then gold. “Did anyone what?”

Renjun smiles, breathless and wide, and _that’s_ the softest Jaemin’s ever seen him. “Find you.”

And Jaemin knows what loneliness feels like. He knows what it’s like to be five years old and lonely, and twelve years old and lonely, and seventeen and lonelier still.

Jaemin knows what loneliness feels like, but it doesn’t feel like this.

“Yeah,” Jaemin whispers, and holds Renjun’s hand tight. “You did.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _I made this place for you._  

 _A place for you to love me._  

 _If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is._  

Richard Siken, “Crush”

**Author's Note:**

> hello, i love najun with all my heart!!! i’m really glad i could post this for jaemin’s birthday. happy birthday to our prettiest nana ;~; i know i like to joke that i’m not a jaemin stan but here i am with 20k in his point of view TT
> 
> some well deserved thank yous: lijeu for holding my hand through all of my crises and being the best sounding-board & beta ever, my boyfriend for reading anything i hand him and giving me suggestions re: jaemin’s injury, renjun love club for the constant cheerleading, and fy-nct.com/@jaeminpic on twitter for all their compilations of schedules, airport photos, and informative threads! the title is from tim o'brien's _the things they carried_. ♡
> 
> thank you so much for reading ;;; hope you enjoyed and can leave me a comment! i would super appreciate it. 
> 
> [cc](http://curiouscat.me/haetbit) | [twitter](http:twitter.com/couplepaljji)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [in my face it still appears](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17415383) by [pyrophane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane)




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